Dashticz graph watermeter show a bar for every usage

[mvdheide01]

Hi all,

Screen Shot 2020-11-24 at 19.23.56.png (33.23 KiB) Viewed 632 times

I have my watermeter (for hot water) shown in a bar graph. That works fine.
But the graph shows the usage for a period of time, not for the total usage from that starttime.
Example
hot water running for:
5 minutes to get hot water for shaving. say 5 liter
3 minutes to brush my teeth (with cold water, so nu usage)
10 minutes shower. say 25 liter.
This will often give at least 2 bars, sometimes 3 depending on the time on the x-as.

What I hope to get is the total from starttime to finish time with max x minutes between the usages. (5 minutes would do I guess).

The goal is to easy show my children how much water they use during showering to make them more aware of their usage.

Who can help me achieve this?

Thanks, Marcel

[Delfuego]

Hi Marcel,

I don't have a direct solution but maybe you can make a virtual meter in Domoticz. With DzVents you write the meter data from your water meter to this virtual meter.

I do something like this myself but with my smart e-meter and data from my solar panels. I call the script every time the solar panel data is updated. My inverter is updating every 5 seconds.

Kind Regards

[mvdheide01]

Hi Delfuego, the watermeter is a virtual meter in Domoticz like described in https://ehoco.nl/watermeter-uitlezen-in ... ua-script/
That works almost perfect, except the part for writing away a record every 5 minutes when no water has been used. After 5 minutes the log of domoticz is filled with a lot of messages that it has been more then 5 minutes ago that i used water. But after the 5 minutes , this message appears every few seconds. A solution for this might solve the graph issue in Dashticz but I did not find the solution yet.
For sure someone has solved this already.

[Delfuego]

Hi Marcel,

I was just looking into the link you sent (all in Dutch). I was wondering if you did set the Sensor Timeout for a longer period of time?

Eventueel kun je “Sensor Timout” op 10000 zetten (dit voorkomt dat je time-outs en log-errors krijg indien je bv. op vakantie bent en gedurende langere tijd geen water verbruikt).

[mvdheide01]

Hi Delfuego, Yes, apparently I did that in the past. But the issue is not that there is too long time before the water sensor is triggered.
It just needs an extra loop function.
Something like if usage = null, write a record every 5 minutes.
Now the behaviour is,
when waterusage is more then 5 minutes ago, write the value, and again, and again...

Spoiler: show

commandArray = {}

-- IDX van de virtuele WaterVerbruikHeet
iIDX = 155

-- Stand van fysieke GPIO WaterMeterHeet overnemen naar de virtuele WaterVerbruikHeet (user variable "WaterMeterHeet")
if ( uservariables["WaterMeterHeet"] > 0 ) then
print("Water usage is set to " .. uservariables["WaterMeterHeet"] / 1000 .. "m3 by user")
commandArray['UpdateDevice'] = ''..iIDX..'|0|'..uservariables["WaterMeterHeet"]..''
commandArray['Variable:WaterVerbruikHeet'] = tostring(uservariables["WaterMeterHeet"])
commandArray['Variable:WaterMeterHeet'] = tostring(0)
end

if ( uservariables["WaterMeterHeet"] == -1 ) then
commandArray['UpdateDevice'] = ''..iIDX..'|0|0'
commandArray['Variable:WaterMeterHeet'] = tostring(0)
return commandArray
end

-- Waterverbruik
-- Waterverbruik ophalen uit de variabele WaterVerbruik:
sWaterUsage = uservariables["WaterVerbruikHeet"]

function timedifference(s)
year = string.sub(s, 1, 4)
month = string.sub(s, 6, 7)
day = string.sub(s, 9, 10)
hour = string.sub(s, 12, 13)
minutes = string.sub(s, 15, 16)
seconds = string.sub(s, 18, 19)
t1 = os.time()
t2 = os.time{year=year, month=month, day=day, hour=hour, min=minutes, sec=seconds}
difference = os.difftime (t1, t2)
return difference
end

if (devicechanged['GPIO WaterMeterHeet'] == 'Off') then
sWaterUsageTot = (sWaterUsage + 1)
print("WaterVerbruikHeet is gewijzigd naar " .. sWaterUsageTot / 1000 .. "m3 ")
commandArray['UpdateDevice'] = ''..iIDX..'|0|'..sWaterUsageTot..''
commandArray['Variable:WaterVerbruikHeet'] = tostring(sWaterUsageTot)
else
-- Iedere 5 minuten het waterverbruik registreren (t.b.v. grafieken/statistieken), ook al is er niets verbruikt.
if otherdevices_lastupdate["WaterVerbruikHeet"] == nil then
commandArray['UpdateDevice'] = ''..iIDX..'|0|'..sWaterUsage..''
elseif (timedifference(otherdevices_lastupdate["WaterVerbruikHeet"]) > 300) then
print("Laatste waterverbruik HEET is meer dan 5 minuten geleden",t1,t2,t2-t1)
print("Waterverbruik is nog steeds " .. sWaterUsage / 1000 .. "m3 ")
commandArray['UpdateDevice'] = ''..iIDX..'|0|'..sWaterUsage..''
end
end

return commandArray

[mvdheide01]

When i look into the database of Domoticz and select Meter and my Hot water usage meter (The variable), it looks like the value is just written to the database every 5 minutes.
So my feeling is, that the part in the script that was there to write a record to the database, even if there is nu water usage, is actually not needed anymore. I commented out that section in the script, and still my variable is updated every 5 minutes....

So my best guess is that I have to make something else to collect the length of every usage and show that in Dashticz.......

[Delfuego]

Ah! Now I think I understand what you want.

My suggestion would then be to write a script in DzVents that counts the pulses from your water meter and if the pulses don't come in anymore for, let's say 1 or 2 minutes, then sent the total to the incremental counter. This way, the consumption of one time using hot water is written as a total with the same timestamp. Small disadvantage is that usage is logged at the time the tap was turned off (or actually 1 or 2 minutes after that depending on the delay you chose).

I have ordered my sensor and am also going to install the water meter. How do you know that hot water is being used? Do you have a separate meter in the hot water line?

[mvdheide01]

Hi Delfuego, yes, I have a cold water and a hot water meter. I bought 2 and placed them inside my house. My actual water meter is at the street side, about 90 meters away. We have a 200 liter boiler which I only warm up at night hours so i want to keep track where all water went