You will still lose the reference voltage so not sure how that will affect the Iotawatt?
That’s tonight’s test.
Theoretically the power inputs should go to 0 and the energy integrators should stop accumulating but still put out a steady value.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
Good news (and not the Professor Farnsworth kind).
The DC UPS does prevent energy glitches during power outages.
Just when I think this is working:
I have read this whole thread. I got here by way of a Shelly thread (which won’t work in the U.S. maybe).
I am fairly new to HA and really want to monitor my energy usage at home.
I cannot tell by all the comments and suggestions in this thread if this product IoTaWatt is a valid one for HA?
I feel like at least one person has gotten it to work, but for others the same solution did not. Am I understanding that part at least?
Is this product worth the time and effort to purchase and attempt to integrate with HA?
Is there a more permanent fix on the way?
Thanks,
–g2
The core integration works fine.
With a couple of caveats:
-
If you create calculated sensors in the IoTaWatt (called “outputs”) they will not show up as entities on the IoTaWatt device page. They are still available as entities in home assistant though. You can see them in Developer Tools → States or the Devices & Services Entities tab. The reason for this is that the entities do not have a unique id. This does not stop you using them in the energy dashboard or anywhere else in Home Assistant (e.g. automations). There is a 3rd part integration that does list the outputs on the IoTaWatt device page but it has other issues - like not resetting exactly at midnight which messes up the energy dashboard. I found no good way to fix this. So just use the core integration and know to find your outputs in the entities list.
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If you have a power outage the energy sensors will glitch and cause massive energy spikes in the Energy dashboard. You can not fix this with template sensors. The only solution is to use a small DC UPS so that the IoTaWatt is always powered. e.g. this: https://www.wagneronline.com.au/5v-9v-12v-38-5wh-dc-in-line-mini-ups/power-12vdc/power-lighting/ups5912-101087/1007502/pd/ will keep the IoTaWatt powered for more than a day without mains power. If you have a power outage longer than this you have bigger problems to worry about.
There is an ESP32 IoTaWatt in development. Good progress is being made but there is no release date information or even a guarantee this will ever become a commercial product. You can read about it here: ESP32 version 0.3 - Bob's Blog - IoTaWatt User Community
Since switching to the core integration and using the DC UPS I have been very happy with my IoTaWatt. It agrees with my billing information to better than 2%.
New IOTAWatt user here. Got it all configured in the IOTAWatt web application, but cant seem to get HA to find it in the new integration. Tried putting in the IOTAWatt host name and/or IP manually but get a “Failed to Connect” message in HA. Any advice on how to get the integration working? Thanks
It has to be the URL. So http://<ip_address>
EDIT: actually looking at the config flow it should only require <ip_address>, no http://
Thanks Tom for the quick reply. Unfortuntately not picking it up. router clearly sees IotaWatt, provides the IP, I place it in the URL string through the integration prompt in HA, and “Failed to Connect”. Looking into other routes like proxmox VM or LXC for EmonCMS.
Do you have any unusual network set up, like VLANs?
Nothing out of the ordinary. Standard network. No VLANs setup. All on same wireless network (HA hosted on Proxmox, device is hardwired). On the HA side I’m running HA Core 2024.7.1, Supervisor 2024.06.2, Operating System12.4.
Not sure if you saw my edit above but looking at the config flow you should just need to supply the ip address, with no http… in front.
Thanks, somehow got it working. Tried multiple times with just the IP. Reset HA. Tried again and it took. Not sure. Now to figure out the best way to display data. Thanks Tom!
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Hey Tom,
I’m looking into home energy monitoring and was considering iotawatt until finding the integration to HA. Would you still not recommend it vs other solutions?
Thanks!
Not sure how you concluded that I do not recommend it.
From this thread, which lead me to this one.
With the caveats above I do recommend it.
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