HarvsG/CurrentCostMeter.md

## CurrentCostMeter.md

      
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              CurrentCostMeter.md
            
          
    You will need:


Raspberry pi - any generation will do, RPI Zero with GPIO would suffice.
A current cost Envi or Envir Smart Meter
And old ethernet patch cord
Some method to connect wires to the GPIO pins on the pi (solder, caps, bread-board or nothing at all)
contrary to a lot of information you do not need a USB to serial adapter or a current cost data cable

Software that we will be using

No need to download yet

https://gitlab.com/lalelunet/measureit or my fork https://github.com/HarvsG/measureit
https://forum.pvoutput.org/t/guide-for-currentcost-envir-on-pi-with-pvoutput-intergration-service/871
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/measureit/xzt-RjCxc8Y
https://forum.pvoutput.org/c/energy-monitors/currentcost
https://code.google.com/archive/p/pvccupload/downloads

Connecting the cable to the GPio directly on the PI

Taken from this tutorial


Cut the ethernet cable in half, leaving a reasonable length on each end.


Strip wires 1 and 4 (solid brown and solid blue for me).
RJ45 pins are numbered on the male connector end-on from left to right with the plastic latch pointing UP


Using any preferred method connect the Wire 1 (brown) from the ethernet to the Serial Rx pin for my pi, this was physical pin 10.


Connect wire 4 (blue) to any of the ground pins


Plug the other end (the RJ45) into the currentcost.


Now on a pi with a Rasberry Pi OS install the pi run sudo raspi-config


Select 5 Interfacing Options, then select P6 Serial.


Disable 'login over serial' and enable the hardware serial


Restart you pi with sudo shutdown -r now


Soon aftere boot run dmesg | grep tt


Look for a line like [    1.049107] 20201000.serial: ttyAMA0 at MMIO 0x20201000 (irq = 81, base_baud = 0) is a PL011 rev2 make a note of ttyAMA0 or whatever it is for you

This is our serial device from the GPIO, we will continue to use it on this tutorial.


cd ~ then sudo nano serial_read.py and paste in:


#!/usr/bin/env python
# note that this is a python 2 script
import time
import serial
import sys
if sys.version_info >= (3,0):
    print("Sorry, the rest of this tutorial requires Python 2.x, not Python 3.x")
    print("You ran this script with version: " + str(sys.version_info))
    sys.exit(1)

ser = serial.Serial(
        port='/dev/ttyAMA0', #you will need to change this if you got different results in 11
        baudrate = 57600, #for some earlier CurrentCost devices this was 9600
        parity=serial.PARITY_NONE,
        stopbits=serial.STOPBITS_ONE,
        bytesize=serial.EIGHTBITS,
        timeout=3
)

while 1:
        x=ser.readline()
        print x
        

sudo apt install python-pip -y && sudo pip install pyserial
sudo python serial_read.py wait a good 30seconds and see if any xml rolls in

If it does, your serial device is working, otherwise the rest will not work
If you see a python version error then it is because your device is running python3 as it's default python command, this will likely cause problems later on.
A possible, but untested workaround would be after step 2 below to edit https://github.com/HarvsG/measureit/blob/master/measureit_system_files/install/svc-run-measureit#L3 and change /usr/bin/python to wherever python2 is intalled. e.g /usr/bin/python2


Installing measureit the very short way


confirm the installs will work by running them manually before the script does sudo apt-get update && apt-get install -y git vim daemontools-run php7.3-fpm php7.3-mysql nginx samba samba-common-bin python-mysqldb python-serial python-setuptools
cd /home/pi, git clone git://github.com/HarvsG/measureit.git
Run the install script with sudo /home/pi/measureit/measureit_system_files/install/install-measureit-image.sh
If the device name found in step 11 above is anything other than ttyAMA0 or ttyUSB0 then:
-sudo nano /web/measureit/measureit_system_files/python/data-input.py change ttyAMA0 to whatever you found above.
Navigate to the webpage (the IP of the raspberry pi) and enter your settings.

first step is to open the inspector and switch to the log page - look out for 500 server errors, which indicates changes have not been made.
set your PVoutput data in the system settings.
Then if your sensor has multiple clamps, add each of these, usually 3
for each of the clamps and sensor go to their settings page and fill in each box, you can leave the PVOutput API Key: blank as you have set it in system settings,
For the PVOutput System ID: set the clamps to 0 and the sensor to your pv output ID e.g 45567.
For the timezone as far as I can tell measureit will use the raspberry pi's GMT/UTC and ignore any DST so you need to specify any offset from UTC here. You will also need to update it if DST changes


Navigate to the IP of the pi in your browser, settings and click grabber restart.
When you navigate to the IP address of your pi you should see the KW usage updating regularly, and PV output updating

Debugging

Also see here

most errors seem to be in database quieries, turn on logging with sudo mysql, SET GLOBAL general_log_file = '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.log';,SET GLOBAL general_log = 'ON'; and sudo tail -f /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.log although this won't show errors you can copy and paste the queries (via a text editor, removing indents) to the mysql terminal and see what happens
remember to SET GLOBAL general_log = 'OFF'; when you are done
sudo tail -f /tmp/measureit.log show the output of the python grabber
sudo svc -d /service/measureit, sudo /usr/bin/python /web/measureit/measureit_system_files/python/data-input.py debug will provide a more verbose output to the log file, (and will print the xml rolling in). sudo svc -u /service/measureit to restart the normal grabber service when you are finished.

Installing measureit the long way


sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y


sudo apt install apache2 mariadb-server git python-mysqldb python-serial python-setuptools 


sudo python /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/easy_install.py pip, sudo pip install twython==2.7.0 requests requests_oauthlib


sudo bash, mkdir /var/www, mkdir /var/www/measureit


cd /var/www/measureit, git clone git://github.com/lalelunet/measureit.git . include the .


cd /var/www/measureit/measureit_system_files/install, sudo service mysql start, cat createdb.sql | mysql -uroot -p
You will be asked for a password, easiest to give the login password of your pi


Exit exit


Now type the local IP address of your pi into a browser on another device, in my case 192.168.1.100, you should see the apache 'It works!' page


sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
change DocumentRoot /var/www/html to DocumentRoot /var/www/measureit/measureit_public_html/


sudo service apache2 restart


sudo mkdir -p /package, sudo chmod 1755 /package, sudo wget http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/daemontools-0.76.tar.gz


sudo tar xvzf daemontools-0.76.tar.gz, cd admin/daemontools-0.76/src, sudo perl -pi -le 's/extern int errno;/#include <errno.h>/' *.[hc]


sudo ../package/install, sudo mkdir /etc/servers, sudo mkdir /etc/servers/measureit


sudo cp -R /var/www/measureit/measureit_system_files/install/svc-run-measureit /etc/servers/measureit/run, chmod +x /etc/servers/measureit/run


cd /service, sudo ln -s ../etc/servers/measureit 


Bodging a cable

This was the old plan but is mostly redudant
Pin pairings on RS232 Serial port connector.
Pins are numbered as you look at the male connector end on with the row of 5 on top. Transmit/recieve are from the perspective of the PC, not the Current cost unit.


9-pin
pin definition	Direction (PC view)


1
DCD (Data Carrier Detect)	input


2
RX (Receive Data)	input


3
TX (Transmit Data)	output


4
DTR (Data Terminal Ready)	output


5
GND (Signal Ground)	-


6
DSR (Data Set Ready)	input


7
RTS (Request To Send)	output


8
CTS (Clear To Send)	input


9
RI (Ring Indicator)	input


RJ45 Pinout for serial connection to the CurrentCost Envi.
RJ45 pins are numbered on the male connector end-on from left to right with the plastic latch pointing UP.
The colours may not be reliable.


Pin
Colour
Definition


4
Blue
Ground


2
Brown/white
Current cost recieve


1
Brown
Current cost Transmit


So pin pairings will be:


RJ45 pin
RS232 pin


1 (Tx)
2 (Rx)


5 (GND)
5 (GND)


2 (Rx)
3 (Tx)


The final pairing is probably uneccessary as some have said that the Envi is transmit only. However according to the Current Cost website, depending on the unit firmware, it may store some historical data. Presumably this would require some send information.
Other Guides/ links:


https://swinders.co.uk/raspberrypi-home-energy-monitor/
https://electrosome.com/pl2303-usb-to-uart-converter/
https://web.archive.org/web/20080906120557/http://www.spaaace.com/cope/?p=106
https://web.archive.org/web/20080820225044/http://e.inste.in/2008/06/15/interfacing-the-currentcost-meter-to-your-pc/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelfrenzy/2499443217/
https://web.archive.org/web/20170604143001/http://81624.de/wiki.81624.de/doku.php?id=measureit:install
https://dalelane.co.uk/blog/?p=456
9-pin	pin definition Direction (PC view)
1	DCD (Data Carrier Detect) input
2	RX (Receive Data) input
3	TX (Transmit Data) output
4	DTR (Data Terminal Ready) output
5	GND (Signal Ground) -
6	DSR (Data Set Ready) input
7	RTS (Request To Send) output
8	CTS (Clear To Send) input
9	RI (Ring Indicator) input
Pin	Colour	Definition
4	Blue	Ground
2	Brown/white	Current cost recieve
1	Brown	Current cost Transmit