How to start with "offline" counters (water, gas, electricity)?

[Nafetz]

Hi,

last week I "found" Domoticz, installed it on a Raspberry Pi and wanted to dive into first steps and some offline counters.

But I cant get them to work properly. This is what I did:

• I created a hardware item for every counter with type "Dummy"

• Then I created a device for every hardware item (Types RFXMeterCounter with Energy, Gas and Water)

• Every day at about 7 pm I enter the value of the counter by sending /json.htm?type=command&param=udevice&idx=MyID&svalue=MyValue

And this is what is happening:

• A few seconds later I see the usage of the day in the first line of the device item

• Beside the icon I can see the counter value that I entered

• In the log diagram I can see the value of the usage

But the next morning the usage value is set to 0 and has disappeared from the log diagram. Sometimes this happens every second day.
For example if I have a usage of 25 every day I will get a report like this:

• Wednesday: Counter 100, Usage 0

• Thursday: Counter 100, Usage 25

• Friday: Counter 150, Usage 0

• Saturday: Counter 150, Usage 25

The counter values of Wednesday and Friday are correct and the usage of Thursday and Saturday.

What am I doing wrong? Or is it impossible to use Domoticz this way?

Best regards, Stefan

[homeJLB]

I think you need to use icremental counter instead off just counter
I use incremental counter and a puls sensor for counting up

[waltervl]

If you use the normal counter you have to send the total counter value (like what you see on the physical counter).

Like every day usage 25, you send
Day 1: 25
Day 2: 50
Day 3: 75
Day 4: 100
Etc

If you do not know these total values you have to use the incremental counter and send 25 each day.

[Nafetz]

Thank you very much for helping!

I would prefer to send the total values per day. In my tests the incremental counter expected usage values.

Like every day usage 25, you send
Day 1: 25
Day 2: 50
Day 3: 75
Day 4: 100
Etc

That's what I did ...

Here the situation after today's update of new values in the example of my solar panel's counter

report1.png (55.7 KiB) Viewed 1317 times

report2.png (45.61 KiB) Viewed 1317 times

At the moment the last value is still visible, but it might disappear this night. I don't know why Sunday's and Thursday's values are still here and the other values not. The values I entered can be seen in the attachment below (Table "Meter_Calendar"). Today I entered 72964070

In the sqlite Database I have this situation

db1.png (23.04 KiB) Viewed 1317 times

Is it possible that the database entry in the table "Meter" without the timestamp is deleting the usage at midnight? And so the value "0" is transported into the table "Meter_Calendar"? But why?

[Nafetz]

As expected: I got an automatic entry probably at midnight into the database table "Meter". Now my usage values from yesterday have disappeared this morning:

report3.png (54.86 KiB) Viewed 1288 times

report4.png (17.64 KiB) Viewed 1288 times

db5.png (21.2 KiB) Viewed 1288 times

[waltervl]

When you use an incremental counter you use

Code: Select all

/json.htm?type=command&param=udevice&idx=IDX&nvalue=0&svalue=USAGE

[Nafetz]

Thank you very much.

I decided yesterday to use "Managed counters" and submit data with DzVents into the database table "Meter_Calendar".
So I created eight user variables (integer) for my four counters and one user variable (string) for the date.

So e.g. for the power counter I have powerCounter_new and powerCounter_old. Additional I have myDate.
As soon as I update the date variable, the script is passing my values of the counter variables.
(If I would manage to read the counter values of the database then the variable powerCounter_old would be not necessary. But I couldn't so far)

The script looks like this:

Code: Select all

return {
    active = true;
	on = {
		variables = {
			'myDate'
		}
	},
	execute = function(domoticz, variable)
          local powerCounter = domoticz.devices(457)
          powerCounter.updateHistory(domoticz.variables('myDate').value, tostring(tonumber(domoticz.variables('powerCounter_new').value))..';'..tostring(tonumber(domoticz.variables('powerCounter_new').value)-tonumber(domoticz.variables('powerCounter_old').value)))
	 domoticz.log('Offline-counter was updated for '..tostring(domoticz.variables('myDate').value), domoticz.LOG_INFO)
	end
}

This works very well - even for historic data. Now I have accurate logs of my usage. And I don't get additional data at midnight. The counters are displayed like "dead" in the deashboard. But thats what I wanted - only statistics of the usage