I am currently monitoring my heat pump using a logger from Passive systems, but I would like to switch to Open Energy Monitor.
I would like to know if any parts of my current set up would be re-usable with open energy monitor.
I have a Sontex Superstatic 449 Heat Meter which reports
The Flow Temperature
Cumulative heat delivered
The system also monitors
An electricity meter
A wireless thermometer in the house
A nearby met station for external temperature
The position of the three-way valve to interpret the flow temperature as either for space heating or DHW
Question 1
Can the EmonPi read the Sonnet Superstatic 449 meter. And if so how? Which bits do I need?
In principle this could allow me to additionally record 2 more variables.
· Return Temperature (°C)
· Flow Rate (litres/minute)
Question 2
How I record the internal temperature from a wireless sensor?
How I record the external temperature from a wireless sensor?
Question 3
Where does the data go? Does it all get fed to the Welsh Clouds and I then download it from there? Can I download the raw data to do my own analysis?
Hi Michael - the datasheet for the Superstatic is a bit ambiguous. It says:
All versions can be ordered with two optional galvanically separated
communication modules or be equipped at a later date when the integrator is in
operation and this without compromising verification
The optical port is “standard”, how are you currently collecting the data from it?
It also mentions M-BUS in the sales description. If this is installed, you wouldn’t need a full emonPi for this, just any Raspberry Pi (or any computer) and a USB->M-BUS adapter.
The other data is likely to be exposed through that interface, but we’d need to do a bit more digging into datasheets.
It’s actually rained on to you, you don’t need to download it Seriously though, yes, you can export it from emonCMS or use it raw from the serial port. You can also run a local version of emonCMS rather than using cloud if you’d prefer.
Regarding the Heat Meter. I read the same text as you and looked to see if the options could be deciphered from the serial number, but I could not see a way to do that.
Regarding emonCMS, do you know what it is? And what does CMS stand for? But it is good to know that whatever it is, the data can be extracted.
I have spent many years of my professional life interfacing measuring equipment and I really don’t want to spend any of my retirement struggling with interfacing. I think I may just buy a duplicate system, and run both systems in parallel if I can. It’s expensive, but it would be interesting.
Hi Michael - to put together all the parts to do the equivalent to your existing device would be pretty expensive, so let’s try and crack this nut. But, noted, we’ll attempt to avoid painful integration!
I searched for Passive Systems but, as you might imagine, they are heavily used words when it comes to heat pumps so I didn’t get any useful results. You said you’re logging through Passive Systems, so how/what is that connected to on the Superstatic?
EmonCMS is OEM’s management and visualisation software, it would be a good idea to have a quick read of the documentation to get an overview of the OEM project.
Hi Michael! Are you the Michael de P of Protons for Breakfast? I suspect your monitoring system is from Passiv Systems , they appear to have been used for various studies, including the BEIS RHI thing. They don’t seem to offer any information about their instrumentation on their website at all, which is unfortunate.
The OEM system is completely open source, and allows you to get to your data yourself relatively easily, that’s if you need to - Trystan is constantly adding new features to address many interesting aspects, as you’ve probably seen.
I am indeed the Michael de P from Protons for Breakfast. And the website I use to view and download data is https://www.passivliving.com/ .But it has no information about the logger. When I log in there is a contact to help “improve”, but they are determined to do nothing at all.
I suspect they scrambled to get something together so they could benefit from the RHI system - the installation instructions were scrappy and almost incomprehensible to the installers. And it’s sort of odd that it doesn’t log return temperature or flow rate. Hence my desire to improve the monitoring.
In the comment from John below he suggests one company that it might be, but I log onto the web site below to get data. However there is no technical information of any kind available there.
A bit of searching on the forum here, too. The Superstatic’s optical port is used for configuration.
PassivLiving seems to suggest it uses Z-Wave. The IoT protocol space is a bit of a mess (Thread, Matter etc) and this is another one with the hardware only really available from a single company.
Would you be able to open the Superstatic and take a picture of the insides? It would help in discovering what’s in there - the external interfaces appear to come as add in cards.
Would you be able to open the Superstatic and take a picture of the insides? It would help in discovering what’s in there - the external interfaces appear to come as add in cards.
I’ll try to do that tomorrow. Am not 100% confident I can, but I will take a look. M
I found the manual and scanned it. The link to a pdf on dropbox is below. The heat meter is configured for RS485 communications, and seems to be connected via an adapter cable to a USB interface. It all looks horribly complicated!
I think, actually, this is pretty simple It’s a single RS485 interface - the PassivLiving hub is just a little embedded system with what appears to be an off the shelf USB->RS485 adapter. So, to interface with this with readily available hardware:
A small computer with a USB port and a network connection (wired or wireless). A Raspberry Pi or similar is ideal.
A USB to RS485 adapter (available from the OEM shop or from the usual outlets)
Now, you have all the registers available to access, as described in the Superstatic 449’s manual.
EmonHub allows you to write interfacers to use this connection directly. Does this get you far enough to get going yourself, or would you need some other assistance? Essentially, you’re replacing the proprietary PassivLiving hub (which is just a little computer) with an open implementation.
There are some configuration bits involved and we are writing a guide to make it as easy as possible. If you’re happy to wait a week, I can update this thread with all the details as soon as it’s ready.
We cant read from the passiv systems room sensor, but we have our own product called the EmonTH if you are happy to replace them with this.
The data goes to emoncms.org, while owned by us, it’s not actually located in Wales, it runs off a few servers in a datacenter located in Gosport, Hampshire Here’s a dashboard example Emoncms - app view and yes there is the option to download raw data either via the feed csv export tool or via the graph tool, see: Exporting CSV — OpenEnergyMonitor 0.0.1 documentation
I have looked at the question of switching before but it has all seemed so complicated. But it seems as though my Micawber-ish approach (Wilkins Micawber - Wikipedia) (something will turn up) may be about to be justified.
Seriously though, yes, you can 
