Smart Meter Texas Integration

Configuration
1

Hello!

When I try to add Smart Meter Texas Integration to HA, it simply states Failed to connect. I
cant find any logged data as to why. Of course I can get to the website just fine.

Any advice would be appreciated.

1 Like
2

I’m having the same issue. Think they added another layer of protection in the login process.

3

Thanks! Keep me posted if you find a solution… I’ll do the same if I find one.

4

I emailed their support team as I could not create an api subscription on the webpage and recieved the following info.

Thanks for Contacting Smart Meter Texas Support Team. We have received your request regards “API Integration”. We need the below prerequisites in order to provide API setup for your account.

1>Public SSL certificate(CA authorized SSL certificate is mandatory for Production or self-signed SSL certificate is for stage if you would like to test)
2>Static IPs-We need the public IP address which needs to be added for IP white listing.

As per the latest SMT 2.0 guidelines, For Residential users, You can share the SSL certificate with any CN name, But only Single domain certificates will be allowed and do not allow the use of Wild card certificates. Let us know if you are having any queries on it.

Along with that they sent me their smt 2.0interface guide.

5

Any recent updates for this Integration?

6

This seems to be a universal / permanent thing with SMT. I signed up and had it working last Friday, only to see it stop working on Sunday with the “Failed to Connect” error.

Maybe there is a way to do this through their API. Can anyone share the API documentation?

7

This has been a very frustrating process. I took the route and requested the API, got a cheap Comodo certificate and provided everything that SMT required. It does no good to contact the SMT help number, as they only support basic questions and items regarding the website. All API work and questions are routed to some team in India, and the communication is horrible, and the instructions fairly non-existent, if you’re a residential subscriber trying to do this.

I was instructed that “for Residential user, you can get the json format of usages for single ESIID without delivery mode from API client tool(Postman/SoapUI). It is synchronous request.”

I’ve never used PostMan, but I downloaded it and was able to load my certificates, and modify the sample POST payload, and was finally able to return my usage data. That’s where I’m stuck. I have to manually adjust my start/end dates in the payload to continue to get up-to-date usage data.

I’m sure the static date thing can be overcome by some enterprising python developer, but I’m not sure the SMT SSL certificate load and other stuff I needed in PostMan is reproducible in Home Assistant.

Every once and a while I pull my data in PostMan and look at it, but that’s as far as I can take it, I’m afraid…

I’m open to any ideas or to lend my experiences if there’s a way to tackle this. The “freebie” API that we’ve been using just isn’t reliable.

8

Do you have / did you give them a static IP address? I requested API access, but I have a dynamic IP and dynamic IP update scripts to work with my domain and SSL certificates which I was told was insufficient. I’ve seen other say they don’t enforce the static IP thing, but in my case they certainly are.

9

Yes, my internet provider uses static IPs with their fiber service, so I was all set there. I think that, along with the IP and domain name that SMT requested, they must be utilizing point-to-point security.

To test, I established a VPN connection to a US-based server so that my externally available IP changed. I was not able to retrieve any of the data using PostMan until I killed the VPN and reverted back to my own, static IP.

I don’t know if it’s still the case, but ISPs used to charge quite a bit to assign you a static IP. There are probably ways to get a static IP without having to go through your ISP, although probably not without cost. I don’t know if a dynamic DNS service would offer an IP option, or just a DDNS host name.

But I’d hate to pay for a service not knowing if I was actually going to be able to use the SMT meter data. I jumped in before I knew that I couldn’t associate POST requests from within HA, to SSL certs.

My SSL cert is all I’m in for at this point. I learned something about PostMan along the way, so I’m chalking it up to an educational exercise.

But it sure would be nice to be able to acquire and consume that data in HA somehow.

I also signed up for the subscription service from my SMT account page, so I now get daily emails with XML usage data as an attachment, but I don’t know if there is a way to automate the extraction and compiling of that data without manual intervention. Every day…

10

I just received some lame excuse because it isn’t working anymore. Something to do with some law changes in December of 2019. I was like, that was 4 years ag!o!