Help with Aeotech Home Energy Monitor

Configuration
1

I need some help determining what values are what. Below is an image of my Home Energy Monitor as it showed up in HA after pairing. I have Group 1 set to 2304 to report Clamp 1 Watts and kWh and Group 2 set to 4608 for the same. The problem is I cannot tell which value is what. I am ‘assuming’ that since there are nine sets of numbers that one is total, one is clamp 1 and one is clamp 2.

Just from observation, it seems only the middle three numbers are changing. I have the configuration set up to report every 30 seconds and I turned off threshold reporting (i.e. it does not have to change by a certain amount to generate a report) which I ‘believe’ should result in the measurements updating every 30 seconds regardless of how much they have changed.

Anyway, I can’t make out any logic that identifies what value is what and would appreciate any help.

Aeotec-HEM
Aeotec-HEM501×525 31.5 KB

2

You should take note that groups in Z-wave are a different beast. In order for group 2 reporting to work, you should have your receiving device (your z-wave stick) also be part of group 2, which it is not by default. By default it’s a member of group 1, only. I’d suggest you recalculate your parameter for group 1, and make it report total, clamp 1, and clamp 2 values. Then set Group 2 to 0 (i.e. no reporting) to decrease needless traffic on the z-wave band.

What you’ve configured makes perfect sense to what you’re seeing. You’ve configured your meter to send to your Z-wave stick only the data for Clamp 1, that’s why it’s the only value updating. If you restart hass, it will poll the meter, and the values for total and clamp 2 will be updated, but only then!

I think the correct value four group 1 (parameter 101 if I’m not mistaken) should be:

Clamp 1 Watts: 256
Clamp 1 kWh: 2048
Clamp 2 Watts: 512
Clamp 2 kWh: 4096
Total Watts: 2
Total kWh: 1

So you add all those numbers (6915) and use that value for parameter 101. Give it a try and let us know, whether it worked or not.

The other option is to configure your z-wave stick and add it to Group 2, but that means, you’ll still be missing the totals in the periodic updates.

3

That is probably the best explanation I have heard yet. I had no idea about the groups. I will change the parameters as you suggested and see how it goes and report back. Though, I still don’t see how to identify which of the values belong to which clamp.

4

Well, if you disconnect the one of the clamps you’ll figure it out. You already have figured out which is Clamp 1 by having set parameter 101 to 2304. The one that currently updates every 30 seconds is Clamp 1. Take note of the attribute IDs and rename them accordingly.

Then change parameter 101 to 4608 - this way you’ll figure out which is Clamp 2 - it’ll start updating every 30 seconds. Whatever’s left is the total :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

So I made the changes mentioned. I still only see the middle three numbers changing at all. I think the next step will be to update the firmware. I think there is an update for it. So I am going to take care of that process and take another run at this once I am certain that is not a factor. It looks like I have to unpair the device to do that so perhaps the firmware will be a little better named, I hope. Though setting the parameters for one clamp at a time is probably the best way as you suggested.

6

Well, this sucks. I updated the firmware, now the device is reporting as dead. Ugggg.

7

Before messing with firmwares, check the Z-wave log. It’s available in the UI under Configuration -> Z-wave at the bottom. Check whether the meter actually acknowledges receiving the parameters, then do a full restart of hass and see what’s happening. Many times I had issues configuring Z-wave devices due to poor reception.

8

So I got my HEM back on-line with the latest firmware. The beauty of that was that it zeroed out everything. So I tried to take advantage of it. I set group 1 to 2304, which, in theory, should have given me just Watts and kWh for C1 (Clamp 1). I expected to see just one number for kWh and one number for Watts. Instead, I have two sets of numbers,

My thinking was that since there are 9 reading, one would be total, one would be C1 the other C2. Therefore, I thought, I would see one reading for kWh and just one reading for Watts somewhere. As you can see in the image below, this is not the case. I only have one clamp plugged in and configured group 1 for only clamp 1.

This confuses things greatly now. I thought I would be able to sort it out with the firmware update.

Another issue I am seeing is that even though I set group 1 to report every 20 seconds, it is not doing so. If I had to guess, it looks like it is waiting for threshold changes instead of using the report time I set. WHY do they have to label stuff like this. How hard would it have been to identify what was what?

HEM-C1Only
HEM-C1Only498×523 6.5 KB

9

Have you tried configuring it through open zwave control panel?

I never actually tried using HASS to do configuration, since when I last added a Z-wave device, HASS didn’t have a control panel and I had to stop hass and launch OZWCP to do the configuration.

Also check the Z-wave log, it can give you an idea of what’s going on.

10

I don’t have any answers, but I feel your pain. I’ve gone through the same trouble trying to get my Aeotec HEM to report values regularly. I wish there was a more friendly way to configure these devices, as a lot of the labels don’t really tell you much (or were poorly translated and don’t necessarily match what the function actually does)

1 Like
11

I changed the group 1 report to 256 which should have just reported the watts for C1. Yet, the same two values that updated with group 1 being 2304 (Watts and kWh) update with it being 256 (just Watts). I am absolutely convinced that even if you set the group 1 report interval to something crazy like 5 seconds, it still is not going to report on that frequency. There is something else that controls that. Not sure what it is at this point, but the group 1 reporting frequency does not do what it implies it does or there are more parameters to configure to get it to report more frequently.

I have set the threshold and percentage values to stupid high and low numbers and still no change in the frequency of updates.

12

To ask again - are you certain that the configuration is received by the meter?! If it’s battery powered, you might need to restart it, and send a configuration in the first 30-60 seconds in order for it to be accepted.

13

I’ll try to post my zwcfg___.xml configuration later. I have my Aeotec HEM (second generation) updating power figures for two clamps and totals every 20 seconds, and accumulated energy figures every 720 seconds. Both reports seem to work just fine.

I don’t think the comments upthread about groups are correct. Z-wave “association groups” do, in fact, act as described. But the Aeotec documentation calls these groups (configurable on the HEM device) “report groups,” and I believe all that means is you can configure different sets of parameters to automatically report on different intervals. For example: it’s helpful to have frequent updates on the real-time power to capture spikes, but there’s no need to get total kWh very often, as it pretty much just gradually increases.

14

Sorry, I should have responded directly to your question. Yes, I am absolutely certain the configuration was received by the meter. I shutdown HA and manually edited the XML file. Also, it is not battery powered, it is line powered.

15

That would be absolutely awesome @wixoff. That was exactly my intention with this device is to capture spikes and write a couple automations around that.

16

After running several days now with just the one clamp plugged in and reporting, I am not closer to deciphering what is what. The kWh only updates when I restart HA. The middle two numbers do update based on what is all running in the house, but other two values only update when HA is restarted as well. So I don’t see what use this thing is going to be overall.

17

So, I think I may have made a minor breakthrough. The last image I uploaded, I only had C1 connected. As you can see, every third number is at a zero value. This morning I made some changes for grins and giggles, because the thing has been pretty useless to me thus far.

I changed the group 1 report to 6915 so that I would have C1 and C2 Watts and kWh’s and Total Watts and kWh. The first three values and the last three values have consistently only updated upon a restart of HA. The middle three values seem to be the live/real-time numbers.

As soon as I restarted HA and it reported again, the picture cleared some. As you can see, the top three values, the energy readings, what should be kWh, seemed to clearly indicate one is C1 and the other C2 and the third value is the difference between the two. Why the first two values showed readings with only one clamp connected previously, I have no clue.

Based on that, I kind of worked my way down the list based on what I was seeing. Though I am not yet confident they are as I have labeled other than the middle three values being real-time updates.

A note on the real-time updates. No matter what I set the reporting interval to, whether it be every 10 minutes or 10 seconds, it does not do so at the intervals specified. It reports, seemingly, every couple of minutes or so. Even more confusing, the three values that seem to be the real-time values, don’t all update at the same time. The first one will update, then a minute or so later the second and then, finally, the third value will update.

The bottom three values seem to be historical totals. Though, again, I am not 100% confident in this.

I am not sure I am going to keep this device around. My hope was that it would provide some kind of real-time values that you could write automations against along with being insightful to how much energy was being used. I didn’t pay a lot for it, thankfully.

HEM-C1-C2
HEM-C1-C2497×524 37.5 KB

18

Where did you get with this? Just hooked mine up today.