Ease of use

Configuration
1

Hi, this my first (and possibly last post).

I have an electric car, and a smappee wall charger at home.

Here in Melbourne there is an electricity company called Amber Electric who sells electricity to domestic customers like myself at wholesale prices. That means customers are exposed to price fluctuations.

I have been holding off joining Amber Electric until they have a software available called smartshift that they’ve been working on. It basically starts car charging when electricity prices are low and stops charging when prices are high. They seem to be taking longer than expected to release the app.

I checked with my Smappee retailer whether the smappee wall charger had the capability to work with Amber electric, so that it automatically charges at low price times and not in expensive times. He said it’s possible via the API and that I would need to use something like Home Assistant to make it all happen.

So, given that context, is this something that is easily done? Note that I have zero skill with coding and have noticed that the threads have a lot of discussion around code and other aspects of computer science that I know nothing about.

If anyone has done this themselves and/or has an idea of the technical know-how required I’d be keen to hear your thoughts, warnings or advice. I really have no idea if it’s very simple or complex.

Many thanks,
Brent

2

If the API is open and there is an integration for the charger then it seems rather easy.
Don’t get me wrong, you will need help with it, but it’s within range if you just provide all the details in a question.

So step 1, find the API and look at the documentation.
There usually is a link or url that you can open. If it displays the full screen with text and it includes characters like { } : " then that seems to work.

Step 2 make sure there is a way for HA to control the charger.
Just Google for it and see if you find an integration.

If those two steps are successful then it’s time to buy hardware and install HA.

2 Likes
3

Ok, many thanks @Hellis81, I have a feeling from browsing that those criteria can be met. I’ll have another look tomorrow to confirm and will come back once I’m a little more confident.
Brent

4

I’ve made a few modest steps in the right direction.

I have a Raspberry Pi 3B, and have flashed the SD card to HA which seems to be loaded onto the Pi okay. So the intention is for that to operate as the server, which seems to be a pretty standard approach.

I have the Pi plugged into the router via an ethernet cable and the Pi has an ip address showing up in the router’s connected devices: X.X.X.21

On my Macmini computer (and windows laptop and mobile phone) I have been trying to connect to the Home Assistant, only through WiFi.

I have tried the Home Assistant app on the Mac. Also, I have tried the addresses:

None of them have worked. I have tried them in different browsers, on the mobile phone, laptop…

I’m at a loss, a friend is going to help tomorrow. It would be good if someone could give us some pointers which we could use to set us on the right path tomorrow. It seems to be local network problem.

Brent

5

Step one is ao attach a monitor and keyboard to the RPI and see what is going on there.

6

You don’t need to mask your internal IP address.
But try http://internal IP:8123

1 Like
7

Would you be able to add a link to the commands to use once the monitor and keyboard are attached? I was looking during the day, but didn’t come up with much of use.

8

First step is to show us what you see on the screen. For instance does it show the Home Assistant boot screen, does it show (same) IP address you saw on your router. You’ll also should have access to the Home Assistant CLI (command line interface):

9

You don’t need to hide your local IP address. 90% of us have a router IP of 192.168.1.1 and the IP of our Home Assistant server is 192.168.1.x, and our PC with the browser is on 192.168.1.y. The last octet is even more meaningless, but what is important is that all are on the same local network. In my case 192.168.1.whatever.

When you put a display in the Home Assistant server, you should see a screen like this when you boot it:

ha

Is the “IP Address for eth0” on the same network as the router and your pc?

10

The HA server was showing the same info as above. We couldn’t get it to work, the log file was showing some errors so I bought a new Micro sd disk and writer, did a fresh install and it worked.

I’ve got the server set up now and once I’ve familiarised myself with the ins and outs of the software I’ll be back with some questions - mainly about this Amber Electric power company and the Smappee car charger.

Thanks @Hellis81 @stevemann and @Edwin_D :smiley_cat:.

11

Alright!

Go to settings → devices and integrations → new integration.
Type in Smappee

The the API.
What is the url for the API. We need to have a look at it I believe.

12

There are different “levels” of chargers. A level 1 charger can run off the normal home ac mains outlet, ther kind you woiuld plug your lamp into. I think HA could control a level one charger to charge only when rates are low today. You wouild not need anything but a “smart outlet” and some way to know when the rates are low.

I can buy a “smart plug” on Amazon for $15 and then plug ther level one charger into it. I know I could sert this up an an hour or so.

But level one chargers are so slow as to be not used very much. And I’ve not seen any 50 amp smart plugs. But I have seen 50 amp solid state relays. I could build a device to turn on and off the power to a dump level two charger.

If you have a level one charger, it might be a good education to set it up on a smart plug and let HA control it. Then you’d be in a better position to implemtn what you really need.

The thing about HA is that it is not a product, it is a framework for building a product. Just like lumber is not a house.

13

Use contactors instead when you are talking about these high loads.
Relays are more unreliable the more you load them, and they start getting unreliable very early.
Like phone charger can make them unreliable

14

It’s not a level 1 charger. It’s hooked up to the mains electricity board. Has a 30A limiter (max) and charges from our solar panels and/or the mains.

To get the API I’ve emailed the smappee company.

15

Do you need that API?
I thought the integration was enough.

But the API you need was Amber Electric? To get the prices?

16

Apparently the Smappee needs to have the API.

Amber electric I just logged in and generated an API and entered that which seemed simple enough.

17

So it’s a private API key for you.
Ok so do you manage to get the prices in to HA?

18

image

I think this is them in this partial screenshot - called “Sensor” in the HA app.

19

I have the Smappee “Connect” - not a smappee “Genius”. The table in the this link shows that the Connect does not have local discovery by HA. It needs to use the Cloud API. I have received the API from Smappee - but am unsure what I need to do next. It is something about a configuration.yaml file.

Documention says To use the Smappee cloud integration you need a personal client_id and client_secret and add these to your configuration.yaml file.

20

Correct.

#Example configuration.yaml entry
smappee:
  client_id: YOUR_CLIENT_ID
  client_secret: YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET

In order to do this you need to add the add-on (in settings) file editor.