Hi,
I'm using my flukso for quite some months now, and I find it very hard to get correct readings from it. First you have to try all different settings for every kind of sensor (water,gas, electricity) until you find a output that resembles consumption, second i would like to have some kind of meter on it which evolves over time, just like the reading on your regular meter. Why is this not possible ??
Eg for gas, my gasmeter has a meter in M³ on it, why can't this value be on the flukso site ? If you put the current value on the site, and from then the values are update, you should keep an exact reading on the flukso site as on the real meter.
Same for electricity and water, I would like to have a meter on the site just like the real meter !
Any feedback is welcome on this !!
Kind regards,
Bart
Internally the FLM already has counters; these are also published via MQTT on topic
/sensor/<sensor id>/counter; these are also persisted in the TMPO database, locally AND on flukso.net. Thus, the rest is just a matter of visualization. As a HAM this should not be too hard for you to accomplish...Interesting concerns/discussion/questions, on4cet!
I see 3 questions actually:
1) why isnt this possible:
>> it is possible, and available over MQTT, as Gebhardm mentioned.
2) why isnt it done?
>> Because its not accurate, and isnt ment to be: a FLM is a metering device initialy designed to evaluate household utility usage differences between consumer devices and consumer device states.
With a current clamp, the device measures only appearent current draw every second, and doesnt measure voltage nor cos phi. Integrating that and extrapolate this to a long period (days- months-years) is like measuring travel distance of your car by tracking RPM speed of the motor. its a non-observable system, thus you have no guarantee of a correct output. Especially with bad power factors or fluctuating main voltage.
3) What can be done to get this functionality?
If you want a good integrated utility usage accuracy, in sync with your official meter(s), connect a kwh-pulse generator, or connect your smart meter (P0 port), or use a meter-dial interpreter device for your water/gas meter.
Similar concerns have been stated a few times already on this forum, eg.
https://www.flukso.net/content/can-flukso-monitor-line-voltage-variations
1/ Re "First you have to try all different settings for every kind of sensor (water,gas, electricity) until you find a output that resembles consumption": The correct meter constant setting is mentioned on the water probe and gas probe pages. For current clamps, you just have to fill in the correct type.
2/ Re "second i would like to have some kind of meter on it which evolves over time, just like the reading on your regular meter": Just toggle the unit on the top right of the chart in into cumulative mode. You can then easily derive the total consumption of a particular sensor during a certain interval by taking the difference between the counter value at the beginning and end of the interval.
Absolute counter values have no meaning, only deltas between them do. Meters get replaced by the meter company at regular intervals. Does your meter company configure your new meter to start counting where the old one stops? Does it do that when you move into a new house? If Flukso were to have to track the previous two cases, publishing absolute meter readings would become complicated very quickly.