New Brultech Energy Monitoring Model (ECM-1240) due in 2009

[bpwwer]

Make sure you click the USB option in the right side of the options dialog.

Don't ask me why, but clicking USB made the serial connection work.

The ECM-1220's USB interface is a serial/usb converter type interface so applications connect to it via the standard COM port interface. Thus the USB mode is really a serial/RS-232 mode. I'm updating the text to reflect that.

Is there any way to get ECM Server to run as a service?

Not directly. It will live in the system tray if minimized. I've looked into having it run as a service a bit but it's not there yet. That's a lower priority than some of the basic functionality that's still missing. There is a way to run any application as service so you might want to google a bit. This looks somewhat promising http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch...9B?OpenDocument

I've never tried this so I don't know how well it would work.

 

[will40]

Got my 1240 hooked up today.

Works great RS232 serial communications into PC, I get realtime accurate results with CT's extended 50' from my main panel.

Now I am trying to convert RS232 to Ethernet. I had an old (discontinued) Lantronix MSS1-T serial to ethernet device laying around I used a few years ago. Hooked it up, used my $100 Eltima Serial to TCP/IP connector/driver software and can see the Lantronix but cannot get any data from the 1240.

Using Hyperterminal all I get is ascii garbage. Checked and matched baud rates at 9600, N, 1. This is about all I know and as far as I can go without some help.

Do you think I need a new serial-ethernet device or perhaps another driver?

Thanks for any help.

Will

 

[Btech]

Got my 1240 hooked up today.

Works great RS232 serial communications into PC, I get realtime accurate results with CT's extended 50' from my main panel.

Now I am trying to convert RS232 to Ethernet. I had an old (discontinued) Lantronix MSS1-T serial to ethernet device laying around I used a few years ago. Hooked it up, used my $100 Eltima Serial to TCP/IP connector/driver software and can see the Lantronix but cannot get any data from the 1240.

Using Hyperterminal all I get is ascii garbage. Checked and matched baud rates at 9600, N, 1. This is about all I know and as far as I can go without some help.

Do you think I need a new serial-ethernet device or perhaps another driver?

Thanks for any help.

Will

If the hyperterminal is showing garbage coming in then you're almost there. The ECM-1240 send data at 19200. Once you change this, you should be good to go.

Paul

 

[will40]

Got my 1240 hooked up today.

Works great RS232 serial communications into PC, I get realtime accurate results with CT's extended 50' from my main panel.

Now I am trying to convert RS232 to Ethernet. I had an old (discontinued) Lantronix MSS1-T serial to ethernet device laying around I used a few years ago. Hooked it up, used my $100 Eltima Serial to TCP/IP connector/driver software and can see the Lantronix but cannot get any data from the 1240.

Using Hyperterminal all I get is ascii garbage. Checked and matched baud rates at 9600, N, 1. This is about all I know and as far as I can go without some help.

Do you think I need a new serial-ethernet device or perhaps another driver?

Thanks for any help.

Will

If the hyperterminal is showing garbage coming in then you're almost there. The ECM-1240 send data at 19200. Once you change this, you should be good to go.

Paul

Paul you were absolutley correct. Changed to 19200 and I got data flowing.

Thanks and nice product!

 

[tenholde]

Received my 1240 a few days ago. I have it wired via serial cable to my HomeSeer server. I've been able to write a simple server (runs on HS box) that reads the data from the 1240 and broadcasts UDP packets. I have a simple client (on my office box) that receives the packets and displays: (1) Current Watt-Seconds (2) Hourly cost (3) Monthly cost (if current watts were used all month)

This was purely for proof of concept, but I am very pleased with the reliability of the communications from the 1240. All is written in vb.net

tenholde

 

[will40]

Received my 1240 a few days ago. I have it wired via serial cable to my HomeSeer server. I've been able to write a simple server (runs on HS box) that reads the data from the 1240 and broadcasts UDP packets. I have a simple client (on my office box) that receives the packets and displays: (1) Current Watt-Seconds (2) Hourly cost (3) Monthly cost (if current watts were used all month)

This was purely for proof of concept, but I am very pleased with the reliability of the communications from the 1240. All is written in vb.net

tenholde

tenholde,

Could you consider making your app available for us to try? I would love to get something to work in homeseer as i have 5 channels of power being monitored but only able to view one channel with Blade's plug-in. I'm anxious to see all the loads I am monitoring.

Thanks,

Will

 

[psharrock]

I'm interested in purchasing this product, but not sure what I need to buy.

My house has the following consumer units :-

2 x 200 Amp Internal
1 x 150 Amp External
1 x 60 Amp External

I presume I need 3 x 200 Amp CT's and 1 x 60 Amp CT, but I'm not sure if they can be connected into an external fuse box.

Any advice much appreciated.

Paul

 

[tenholde]

Received my 1240 a few days ago. I have it wired via serial cable to my HomeSeer server. I've been able to write a simple server (runs on HS box) that reads the data from the 1240 and broadcasts UDP packets. I have a simple client (on my office box) that receives the packets and displays: (1) Current Watt-Seconds (2) Hourly cost (3) Monthly cost (if current watts were used all month)

This was purely for proof of concept, but I am very pleased with the reliability of the communications from the 1240. All is written in vb.net

tenholde

tenholde,

Could you consider making your app available for us to try? I would love to get something to work in homeseer as i have 5 channels of power being monitored but only able to view one channel with Blade's plug-in. I'm anxious to see all the loads I am monitoring.

Thanks,

Will

I intend to make all available at no charge. I'd be glad to send what I have so far, but it is not yet interfaced to Homeseer -- that is the next step. I'm also only processing data from Channel 1 so far, but the additional data is trivial to add. I can send you what I have so far if you want. PM me.

tenholde

 

[will40]

Received my 1240 a few days ago. I have it wired via serial cable to my HomeSeer server. I've been able to write a simple server (runs on HS box) that reads the data from the 1240 and broadcasts UDP packets. I have a simple client (on my office box) that receives the packets and displays: (1) Current Watt-Seconds (2) Hourly cost (3) Monthly cost (if current watts were used all month)

This was purely for proof of concept, but I am very pleased with the reliability of the communications from the 1240. All is written in vb.net

tenholde

tenholde,

Could you consider making your app available for us to try? I would love to get something to work in homeseer as i have 5 channels of power being monitored but only able to view one channel with Blade's plug-in. I'm anxious to see all the loads I am monitoring.

Thanks,

Will

I intend to make all available at no charge. I'd be glad to send what I have so far, but it is not yet interfaced to Homeseer -- that is the next step. I'm also only processing data from Channel 1 so far, but the additional data is trivial to add. I can send you what I have so far if you want. PM me.

tenholde

That is great news, looking forward to trying it out. Thanks.

Will

 

[3tones]

tenholde, I'd like to get a copy of your app. I've been running ECMServer for a couple of days sampling at 1 second and I've accumulated 17MB of data. I started to look at the information in Excel and it chokes on that much data. (The graphs can only show 30,000 points = ~8 hours and you can't zoom in to look at the detail). In looking for a solution I remembered experimenting with Splunk at work (www.splunk.com). It can read/parse/graph/analyze data from a multitude of inputs. One of them is UDP packets being sent to it. My hope is that with tenholde's software I can send the data and use splunk to keep the data and to view it.

How are other people dealing with viewing/analyzing this much data?

 

[3tones]

If I connect to the ECM1240 at 19200,8,n,1 using hyperterminal should I expect the data to show up in human-readable format? I just get gibberish. Does it need to be decoded? If so, can someone hook me up with the serial API?

 

[tenholde]

If I connect to the ECM1240 at 19200,8,n,1 using hyperterminal should I expect the data to show up in human-readable format? I just get gibberish. Does it need to be decoded? If so, can someone hook me up with the serial API?

It is binary data and must be decoded.

tenholde

 

[tenholde]

tenholde, I'd like to get a copy of your app. I've been running ECMServer for a couple of days sampling at 1 second and I've accumulated 17MB of data. I started to look at the information in Excel and it chokes on that much data. (The graphs can only show 30,000 points = ~8 hours and you can't zoom in to look at the detail). In looking for a solution I remembered experimenting with Splunk at work (www.splunk.com). It can read/parse/graph/analyze data from a multitude of inputs. One of them is UDP packets being sent to it. My hope is that with tenholde's software I can send the data and use splunk to keep the data and to view it.

How are other people dealing with viewing/analyzing this much data?

I'd be glad to make available what I have. Here are the current capabilities:

Connects to serial port. You specify the port.
Reads records from ECM-1240. It must be set in the proper mode and transmitting realtime data. My program does not yet set ECM-1240 parameters. Use ECM-1240 interface program from Brultech site.
Broadcasts UDP packets with character data. You specify port and UDP Broadcast group.

If you can handle UDP packets where all data is numbers in fixed ASCII fields, then it should work for you.

I do not yet handle any of the other ECM-1240 data.

Let me know if you want a copy -- not much documentation yet. Definitely alpha level code.

tenholde

 

[moridin1138]

tenholde, I'd like to get a copy of your app. I've been running ECMServer for a couple of days sampling at 1 second and I've accumulated 17MB of data. I started to look at the information in Excel and it chokes on that much data. (The graphs can only show 30,000 points = ~8 hours and you can't zoom in to look at the detail). In looking for a solution I remembered experimenting with Splunk at work (www.splunk.com). It can read/parse/graph/analyze data from a multitude of inputs. One of them is UDP packets being sent to it. My hope is that with tenholde's software I can send the data and use splunk to keep the data and to view it.

How are other people dealing with viewing/analyzing this much data?

My goal is to get a plugin for Munin together. I believe this data is a perfect fit for Munin or any RRD-type setup.

Getting the Python app done is the first step.

 

[tenholde]

tenholde, I'd like to get a copy of your app. I've been running ECMServer for a couple of days sampling at 1 second and I've accumulated 17MB of data. I started to look at the information in Excel and it chokes on that much data. (The graphs can only show 30,000 points = ~8 hours and you can't zoom in to look at the detail). In looking for a solution I remembered experimenting with Splunk at work (www.splunk.com). It can read/parse/graph/analyze data from a multitude of inputs. One of them is UDP packets being sent to it. My hope is that with tenholde's software I can send the data and use splunk to keep the data and to view it.

How are other people dealing with viewing/analyzing this much data?

My goal is to get a plugin for Munin together. I believe this data is a perfect fit for Munin or any RRD-type setup.

Getting the Python app done is the first step.

Early alpha version of server that broadcasts ECM-1240 UDP packets:

http://www.tenholder.net/tenWare2/tenHsEcm1240

tenholde