Refoss EM16 - My experiences / review; pros & cons

TL;DR - I like, well mostly like, the Em16 now that I have it working. I would not recommend buying one right now. I DO recommend waiting for the EM16P that’s due later this year. I DO want Refoss to succeed even though I’ve got issues with the EM16 in its current state.

This is just my experience. But since I didn’t find a lot out there on the EM16 when I was trying to figure things out, I thought maybe this will help someone else. Hopefully. :grin:

Tech support:
Pro: They were friendly and helpful. They also responded in ~27hrs which isn’t terrible since I think they are in another country on another continent then I am. :grin:

Setup:
I’m going to skip nearly two days of pain. But I personally found the app garbage. My primary “phone” I want to actually just be a phone/text so it’s a LineageOS install with almost no additional apps except for f-droid + Nextcloud to sync contacts/data. Thus, their app won’t work because they only support GPlay for Android :face_vomiting: (not that I really want to install any app on my phone).

I do have a Android tablet that I do all my app’y things on. And it’s got all the same features as my phone except it isn’t connected to a cell service. I could not get their app to work. Most of the time, tapping on the app it would open and immediately close it. After a fresh reboot, I got it to open but the sign-in would crash - and you MUST sign in before you can scan for the device. It was very frustrating. I tried with a third Android device and that didn’t work either. In the end, I went to the store and bought a 30$ pre-paid phone with the latest android and that worked. Their Tech Support said they don’t support tablets - which confuses the heck out of me because the tablet is an Android device on a very recent release (eg: it’s not app compatibility with old versions issue). Anyway. Whatever silliness is going on there - it sucks. Same with reliance on GPlay.

Con: You MUST use their stupid app for setup on the EM16. I really wish it was more of a Shelly type setup with a local web connection.
Future pro: Per their Tech Support, there will be a EM16P edition later this year that is supposed to have full open API with full local control without required an app or cloud service. IF true, then I really want to swap My EM16 out as soon as I can.

Pro: When I actually did get the app working with the Em16 on the primary network - it did do an upgrade to the latest firmware for me and that was pretty seemless.

Con: I already know it’s going to suck trying to do another update. (see the Home Assistant integration section below.)

Installation:
Went well. I’m always super nervous about power so I was super cautious and killed as much of the power as I could before working.

Informational: Kind of a con, kind of a pro - the clamps are fairly small and the latch is solid. But the hinges are really weak and wiggly. I’m already working in a tight enclosure with a flashlight and if the latch isn’t lined up perfectly it simply won’t connect. A lot of frustration getting the clamps to latch at times, but I’m pleased with how solid the clamps appear to hold. It also added a lot of extra wires and filled any extra space I had - but this is to be expected. I think they did really well with the limitations they have to work with.

Con: I don’t know if it’s the HA Refoss integration or the device or the manual. But the manual says the K->L diagram should point TO the breaker on the main clamps and point TO the load on the small clamps - it says this in two different ways in two different places. Support confirms this. I had a friend verify that I did this correctly. Yet all of the values in Home Assistant reported “energy returned” not “energy consumed” for all sixteen clamps (not counting the two breaker clamps which reported correctly). :unamused: After a chat with support, it was just easier for me to flip the clamps around… for all sixteen clamps. :weary: Supposedly there’s a control option in the app, but I am not going to mess with that stupid app again if I don’t have to.

Informational: There are six clamps for three (A, B, C) groups which correspond to the poles on my electrical box. I had more then 5 of both A and B devices I wanted to monitor (remember A1/B1 are breaker clamps) - 4 more A’s and 3 more B’3 to be exact… So my C is monitoring additional A’s because there were more of them and I just tossed the other two C clamps onto A breakers I care less for because I have them so why not… but that’s rather disappointing. My breaker box is rather huge so maybe I’ll inquire about getting a second one when the EM16P comes out and how two might work because then in theory I can cover my entire breaker box with two. :man_shrugging: I’ll figure that out if/when I ever seriously consider it. I do wish they had a bigger version or something expandable for an add-on to cover more breakers.

Home Assistant Integration:
Pro: it works! I’ve got data coming in! :confetti_ball:

Con: I couldn’t get it to work on my isolated IoT network at first. I couldn’t figure out why for several hours poking at it. If I put the EM16 on my primary network it was almost instantly discovered but it would just spin on the IoT network… so to shorten the story I put on a packet capture… the Home Assistant integration was ONLY looking at the primary network. However, even trying to make the IoT network primary wasn’t working for me. So - I logged into HA via the IoT network, disabled all the other networks, rescanned where it picked it up instantly, then added the primary network back in. :man_shrugging:

Con part 2: When I reboot HA, I now have to do that network juggling every! single! time! for me to get data in. :sob:

Con part 3: When the EM16 is on the primary network and the pre-paid phone is on the primary network - the app sees the EM16 device. When the EM16 is on the IoT network (which has zero internet access) and the pre-paid phone is on the IoT network - the app sees nothing… nothing at all. It doesn’t see the device. When I hit the plus button it just spins. The app is absolutely worthless in this situation and I have to do the reset on the EM16 to put it on the primary if/when I need/want to access via the app (eg: future firmware updates are going to suck).

Pro: For each circuit I get current (A), power (W), power factor, energy consumed (Wh), energy returned (Wh), and voltage (V). So I have everything I need to put into my energy graphs.

Things I’m still working on

I haven’t yet figured out how to best get this data into my energy dashboard correctly. But now that I’m fairly confident I’ve got all my clamps in the right direction giving me better data, I’ll focus on making it pretty and useful.

Hopefully this is useful for someone. :grin:

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You’re automating your sewing machine?

(you might want to explain what the device is first up, rather than assuming we know).

He means this shitty integration

LOL. It does indeed look like it is performing like :poop:

I see no open issues though: GitHub · Where software is built

There’s no hope of a platinum rating there…

I did say “Refoss Em16” so I figured that people would know what it was… :man_shrugging:

Now that I’ve been running it a few days, I do like the metrics that are coming in - but there are still a few rough edges to the integration. For example, it would be nice to group things like A1/B1 as a single integration for Air Conditioning; things like that.

I am also very hopeful for a fully standalone integration being far more useful to the community.

I just set up my Refoss EM16 and integrated it into HA. The latest firmware allows merging circuits, which I did for 2 circuits on double pole breakers. All of my circuits show in HA except for the 2 channels created when the circuits were merged . Anyone else run into this?

Rad, I just setup my Refoss EM16 and I have had the same issue. I created merged channels in the Refoss app but I could not get those merged channels to come into HA. I think I found the answer though!

  • Browse to your Home Assistant instance.
  • Go to Settings > Devices & Services.
  • At the top of the screen, select the tab: Helpers.
  • In the bottom right corner, select the Create helper button.
  • From the list, select Group.
  • Follow the instructions on screen to complete the setup.

There is also a full description of what to do here.

EM16P is available. I just ordered one. Will see how that will work.

I read you can change the flow direction in the app without reopening the panel. I don’t know if that is just for 16P?

Hey @Jet1 ! That’s awesome news. I might save up and try to get one of the EM16P’s to cover all the circuits in my panel. It would be nice to have all of them. Since I figured out the networking issues, I’ve not had any problems and I’ve been happy with it - though it hasn’t had a firmware update since I did the install… Hopefully they get better at that and let Home Assistant do it for me on my private IoT lan…

As for the flow direction in the app - supposedly, yes. I couldn’t get it to work when I did this several months ago. :man_shrugging: Hopefully that app has gotten better, because it was miserable using it back in August…

Super excited about the only-local option though.

I just installed my EM16P that arrived yesterday! A nice end-of-year gift heh.

I can confirm you are able to invert flow direction from the app (and confirmed it works).

Though I can also confirm the app is shit, this is the view from where to flip the readings:

You have to write “-1” for the channels you want to flip :roll_eyes:
Coupled with the fact the app (or the web UI for that matter) has no graphs or any helper whatsoever to make use of the raw data, weeeeeell, sigh.

Alas, I installed this in a house that (for now!) does not have a h-a running, so I can’t test the integration yet.

Let me be more precise.

The app has graphs:

Just very basic, with no filters, no possibility to define any correlation between the channels (i.e., downstream clamps) or being able to have a quick “this channel is stealing all my power” moment.

So I suppose this thing is really only usable together with h-a.

download the refoss_rpc from HACS. All the sensors shows up in HA. I’m still new to this. I can’t figure out how to assign sensor to different rooms. I can only assign the whole lot to one room. It is showing more energies than I get from the grid. :slight_smile: I have to find out where the duplicate is coming from. Wish the kit was even split sensors between 2 lines. You can either have 5 of A and 11 of B, vise versa. I have to use one sensor for 240 circuits and doubled the factor. It might not be accurate.

You can change the settings without using their app.

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How is this working out for you? I picked up the EM16P. I still had to create an account on the app with connection to the ‘cloud’. After it was setup I restricted it from accessing the internet. I integrated it into Home Assistant using the Refoss RPC integration, everything worked fine for a few days but now HA is reporting a loss of communication for about 1 second a couple times a minute. Are you experiencing any of that. I just emailed Refoss support so I’m still waiting for a response

I have no such issue. Everything is working fine so far. I’m a Meross user. I just added the monitor to that app/account. They seem to be the same outfit.

Do you allow it access to the internet? I reenabled access and it started working flawlessly. After 4 days without issue, I blocked internet access again and I got about 12 hrs before hitting intermittent connectivity.

I also recently got one, and can basically confirm everything

  • the labels on the direction of the clamps are randomly wrong. You can fix this in the app. However, if the machine gets reset, e.g., you need a factory reset to change wifi networks, you lose the details. So I went and manually turned all the clamps around
  • I have the older em16 not the newer em16p version. There are a few quirks but I got it to work with homeassistant and it’s been extremely solid for the last week. I may post my yaml/details at some point
  • I am using the built in integration. for my older em16 I found the HACS one to be a little more clunky
  • there are gotchas abound to get things working in the energy panel but you eventually figure them out :joy:

yes, left cloud “on”

After some trial and error, things are finally working.