Monitoring electricity & gas through Z-wave

[neske]

Hi,

I am a rookie in the home automation. After Googling for few weeks, out of existing technologies I've decided to try Z-wave. "Vera" Controller from Mi Casa Verde along with number of Z-wave devices are in the mail ... toys are comming!

I have a question regarding available Z-wave sensors. I would like to monitor total house electricity consumption (like TED, the energy detector) and Gas consumption over Z-wave. Is anyone aware of such production and/or is there an alternative? I'd like to keep the home automation as simple as possible and wouldn't like to integrate number of different systems.

Willl appreciate any comments/suggestions.

Cheers,

Neske

 

[twilo123]

Hi,

I am a rookie in the home automation. After Googling for few weeks, out of existing technologies I've decided to try Z-wave. "Vera" Controller from Mi Casa Verde along with number of Z-wave devices are in the mail ... toys are comming!

I have a question regarding available Z-wave sensors. I would like to monitor total house electricity consumption (like TED, the energy detector) and Gas consumption over Z-wave. Is anyone aware of such production and/or is there an alternative? I'd like to keep the home automation as simple as possible and wouldn't like to integrate number of different systems.

Willl appreciate any comments/suggestions.

Cheers,

Neske

not yet as far as i know. vera claims to do it via AEC zwave devices but i haven't actually seen one AEC zwave device on the market yet. even then it will only monitor zwave devices as far as i can tell, not the actual feed coming in the house (unless they throw zwave onto a device such as TED, smile).

would love to hear your experiences with vera once you get it and play around with it. the supposed energy monitoring function is a joke from what i understand. it is just a calculation based on a supposed 100w light bulb which you can manually change the w on. it's more like energy guessing than monitoring.

zwave is a current version and they have an innovative usb stick which doubles as an inclusion device. i would really like to know you experience with it if you purchase it. i think it is a seperate cost.

basically it is plutohome all over again rebranded. same developer from what i understand.

says it has a java app and web app for iphone. i'm curious for security cameras if the feed has to go through the vera box and to your phone. if so, i can imagine huge delays and low fps, especially remotely.

also, i would be interested in knowing if you port forward the web page does it provide a basic login or are you basically being forced to use their remote access subscription service.

 

[ano]

Hi,

I am a rookie in the home automation. After Googling for few weeks, out of existing technologies I've decided to try Z-wave. "Vera" Controller from Mi Casa Verde along with number of Z-wave devices are in the mail ... toys are comming!

I have a question regarding available Z-wave sensors. I would like to monitor total house electricity consumption (like TED, the energy detector) and Gas consumption over Z-wave. Is anyone aware of such production and/or is there an alternative? I'd like to keep the home automation as simple as possible and wouldn't like to integrate number of different systems.

Willl appreciate any comments/suggestions.

Cheers,

Neske

From their video, it sounds like they have something in mind for whole house monitoring, but have not yet said yet. Many devices out there could be modified to work with Z-Wave. As for gas, that is pretty hard, but here in Phoenix, the utility reads gas meters with Zigbee, but they don't tell users how to read the meter for their own use.

 

[felixrosbergen]

For electricity monitoing through Zigbee the Brultech unit can be expanded with a Zigbee dongle from what i understand.

http://www.brultech.com/HomeEnergy/homemodels.html or this thread http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=10985

I havent personally used this product and i don't know how this would integrate with the Case Verde unit you're getting.

Gas metering would be the much harder one i would think...maybe you're better off trying to get an aux contact of your furnace to measure how long it's on and approximating gas usage based on that.