Smart meter with iobroker

Configuration
1

Hey everyone,

I am at a loss after getting quite far into my project and looking up various thing to get to this point.

I have an Apator Apox+ meter which I have unlocked via PIN.
I have installed an IR reader which receives data.
I installed iobroker on a Pi3 and can connect to it.

Within iobroker I installed the mqtt client and managed to send the relevant data to Home Assistant.

My problems:

  1. The data within iobroker is displayed weirdly. It doesn’t give me a W or kW measurement but the value looks like this: current use
    So that’s just a gigantic number without unit of measurement.

As a consequence I cannot use it for my energy values in HA. I am assuming that this is where the problem lies.
Can anyone help me here or do I need to go to the iobroker forums?

  1. In HA I configured two sensors:
mqtt:
  - sensor:
      state_topic: "iobroker/Aktueller_Verbrauch"
      name: "Aktueller_Verbrauch_Strom"
      unit_of_measurement: "W"
  - sensor:
      state_topic: "iobroker/Gesamtverbrauch"
      name: "Gesamt_Verbrauch_Strom"
      unit_of_measurement: "kW"

So even if the number is totally off, I should be able to select those for the enery dashboard? Looking at the entity it does say “W” on the graph and the value though.
graph

Why can I not choose the “Aktueller_Verbrauch” entity for my energy dashboard then?

I’d appreciate the help as I have been working on this for quite some time and it is rather frustration to not be able to progress further now.

2

Are you using a RPi3 (with sd card, full OS, …) just for reading a diode on your power meter?

Might be a little over-engineered and probably prone to fail over time. A $2 ESP with some peripheral might just do the job better.

Should be explained in the docs: :point_down:

Troubleshooting missing entities

CONDITION

You are trying to add a sensor to the energy dashboard, but it does not appear in the selection list.

RESOLUTION

To find out why the sensor is not showing, check the following points: …

3

Are you using a RPi3 (with sd card, full OS, …) just for reading a diode on your power meter?

Might be a little over-engineered and probably prone to fail over time. A $2 ESP with some peripheral might just do the job better.

For installing and everything I decided to try the Pi3 since I assumed it would take too long with weaker devices. I do have a leftover Pi Zero which I wanted to use once I got everything up and running and understand how I solve the problems that inevitably show up. So I think that should work out then :slight_smile:

Should be explained in the docs: :point_down:

I wasn’t aware there was extensive documentation on enery management… :sweat_smile: I will have a look and post follow up questions here, if I have any.

Thanks for your help and quick reply!!!

1 Like
4

Still a sledge-hammer to crack a nut :peanuts::hammer: if you ask me :wink: Alone the requirement for storage (e.g. micro sd card) and a full fledged OS for a raspberry pi. A ESP with esphome installed is really everything that is needed - thank’s to the native api it is even not necessery wasting time with mqtt :tada:

https://github.com/klaasnicolaas/home-assistant-glow/raw/dev/static/images/schema.png

1 Like
5

I haven’t tinkered much with ESP yet except for pressure sensors, which I haven’t managed to work reliably yet :smiley: So I did not really think of ESP. I will have a look at it :slight_smile: