Changing the RFXmeter base address

Posted on December 1, 2021 by james

This morning I overcame the first obstacle on the way to rebuilding my power monitoring system.

I have two RFXmeter units sending data to the receiver which is plugged into a Linux machine on which I’m running rfxcom-rx from the perl Device::RFXCOM package. It just displays the incoming messages which is all I want until I get everything working. Unfortunately both RFXmeter units have the same base address which means I get output of the form:

master rfxmeter 30.00f099810005: sensor/rfxmeter.00f0[count]=39297
master rfxmeter 30.01f14ea3000f: sensor/rfxmeter.01f1[count]=20131
master rfxmeter 30.02f258c10002: sensor/rfxmeter.02f2[count]=22721
master rfxmeter 30.03f30000000a: sensor/rfxmeter.00f0[count]=0
master rfxmeter 30.04f40aa30001: sensor/rfxmeter.01f1[count]=2723

for the five current sensors I’m using. That’s not too helpful because obviously I can’t tell from the data which sensor it applies to.

Fortunately it’s possible to reconfigure the meter unit to use a different base address, though it doesn’t work quite as neatly as I’d like. The manual explains how to do it using some Windows application to display the messages from the meter unit, but as I don’t have Windows running anywhere handy and in fact it’s quite awkward to set anything up so I can see a screen displaying the messages whilst I’m standing next to the meter unit the process is not ideal. What I worked out is this…

  1. Turn off the RFXmeter by unplugging the power transformers for at least ten seconds
  2. Press the “mode” button on the RFXmeter and reconnect the power
  3. The LED next to the mode button should light up to indicate that the unit is in configuration mode. Release the mode button.
  4. The green light should now flash a bit whilst the unit transmits a message to tell you to set the interval rate. Once that stops, press the mode button again within five seconds
  5. There should be more flashing, corresponding to the request to set the base address being sent. Just wait at this point
  6. More flashing should start fairly quickly, as the unit transmits its current address. Once that stops, press the mode button again
  7. One final burst of data should now be sent with the new address and you’re all done

At this point the unit should have incremented its base address. So whereas the initial address on mine was 00f0, it had become 01f1. That still clashed with one of the sensors in my other unit though, so I actually had to repeat the entire process twice to get the address to be 03f3. In fact, it would appear that pressing the mode button after the new address is transmitted will increment it again, but I didn’t find that out until after I’d realised that there was still a clash and fixed it.

Now the data displayed from all the sensors looks like:

master rfxmeter 30.00f09aee0001: sensor/rfxmeter.00f0[count]=39662
master rfxmeter 30.01f14f640001: sensor/rfxmeter.01f1[count]=20324
master rfxmeter 30.02f2596c000c: sensor/rfxmeter.02f2[count]=22892
master rfxmeter 30.03f30000000a: sensor/rfxmeter.03f3[count]=0
master rfxmeter 30.04f40aa30001: sensor/rfxmeter.04f4[count]=2723

which is much better as I can now tell all the sensors apart. In my case they are:

00f0: incoming phase from the meter
01f1: main house
02f2: “granny annexe”
03f3: pool house
04f4: solar PV

We do actually have a second phase, but there’s no access to a socket on that phase in the meter cabinet (quite sensibly, I’d suggest) so when I want to add monitoring to that I’ll have to see what possibilities exist as regards adding a current transformer to the supply in the outbuilding it feeds.

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Power monitoring revisited

Posted on December 1, 2021 by james

A few years back I used to have a load of power monitoring stuff hooked up to the house electricity supply, but then we had a lot of electrical work done and it had to be removed. I didn’t get around to reinstalling it.

I’ve decided that now is the time. It’s quite old kit, using some RFXcom meters and receivers that I used for a work project about ten years ago, but it looks like they still work so I’m going to see what I can achieve.

So far I’ve connected up current sensors on the power feeds from the main meter and solar PV generation meter and to the main part of the house, the “granny annexe” (which also includes the workshop, though I may be able to split that out later) and the pool house. I have a perl script that I quickly hacked up to read the incoming data and write it to the terminal, and that’s it.

I’m quite tempted now to set up an MQTT broker to which I can publish power consumption data and, assuming it’s possible, then use some of the Open Energy Monitor code to process that and make it available on a website.

If that works then I can also look at publishing my weather data to MQTT and perhaps use WeeWx to process that.

And if that all works then I can probably take things even further. It may perhaps be possible to monitor the temperature in my greenhouse(s), for instance. And I’m wondering if it is feasible to make a little 1-wire temperature sensor unit that would plug into a mains socket and report room temperatures via wifi.

Another possibility is to add sensors to count the LED pulses on the mains and solar PV meters just to compare the readings with the current transformer ones.

And for the sake of completeness (and perhaps so I don’t forget) I’ll mention that I could possibly butcher the transformer inputs for the RFX metering units so inputs from the same electricity phase only need one transformer to measure voltage levels rather than one per sensor, as I have five plugged in at the moment which is a bit extreme.

There’s probably other stuff I should look at too, such as running all this stuff inside containers.

Lots to think about 🙂

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Zombie Pi

Posted on December 1, 2021 by james

Good news! It seems my Raspberry Pi isn’t dead after all, though the problem is a little odd.

I ordered some new SD cards so I had some spares, and out of interest put a new copy of Raspbian on one of them, put it in the Pi and it booted happily first time. Yet it wouldn’t boot from the old SD card that was fine in another Pi! I’m not going to complain, but I can’t claim to understand why…

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Model 1 Raspberry Pi bites the dust

Posted on November 29, 2021 by james

My first ever Raspberry Pi has died 🙁

It’s been out with the weather sensors in my Stevenson screen for at least a year, but we had a power outage a short while ago and it wouldn’t reboot. I brought it back inside to check over and found that it was reporting faults on the SD card when trying to boot. I reformatted the card and reinstalled the OS, but it still wouldn’t boot, yet swapping the card into a different Pi gave no errors. A different card wouldn’t read at all.

I know there can sometimes be problems with the SD card socket, but actually it appears completely undamaged and the contacts look clean. I’m wondering if it is perhaps the SD card interface that is becoming unreliable.

For the time being I’ve replaced the unit with another and if it’s convenient at some point I might give replacing the socket a go just in case, but it must be about ten years old now, is slow compared with newer models and doesn’t really owe me anything, so I might just give up on it.

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Swimming, 29th November 2021

Posted on November 29, 2021 by james

I was a bit pushed for time today so I had to sacrifice some of my 25m reps, but that perhaps wasn’t such a bad thing as I was struggling with them a bit after managing to do all my 50m reps under 43 seconds again 😀 In the end I think I only managed ten twenty-fives before I had to get out.

Very pleased with the performance on the 50m set though, so next time I shall drop the interval again and see how much pain that causes 🙂

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Swimming, 28th November 2021

Posted on November 29, 2021 by james

I had a couple of days off last week thanks to not feeling great and missing quite a bit of sleep, so today was my first swim for six days. I was expecting it to be fairly tough, but actually it went quite well.

My 50m reps were all below 43s except for two and the 25m reps were acceptable as well. I’m still looking for another set where the fifties are all below 43s though. Hopefully that will come soon.

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Well this is quite unexpected

Posted on November 29, 2021 by james

This is a photo of some of this winter’s purple sprouting broccoli plants taken on 26th November.

They’re starting to flower!

The plants weren’t sown or planted out particularly early. In fact possibly later than the instructions on the packet suggest. But because of the strange way our weather is now behaving, they’ve started producing flower spikes several months earlier than we’d normally get them appearing.

Now the weather actually does appear to be turning colder for the winter having spent most of November above 10°C, perhaps they’ll calm down a bit and wait until the new year before making any more.

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No dig diary, 18th November 2021

Posted on November 22, 2021 by james

Forgot to post this a couple of days ago…

As I’ve already written, I’ve been getting ahead on compost for next winter, filling one of the bins with shredded material from some tidying up of the garden. There’s no grass in this. It’s mostly hedge prunings. Certainly nothing I’d have been too keen to put in unless it went through the shredder first. Three days after I added the last material I put the compost thermometer in to find out how it was going. And it certainly was going!

I’m surprised yet pleased to see that the temperature can get so high without the need for stuff like grass.

We’ve still not pressed the apples (this coming weekend, hopefully) and the spent pomace will definitely be going in on top. After that I’ll be moving on to the next bin. This time last year I think we’d only just started filling this bin and I think it took until some time in May to completely fill it, so we’re way ahead there. I may need to make another compost bin though 🙂

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AAG rain gauge repaired

Posted on November 22, 2021 by james

Well, I hope so, at least.

A new reed switch arrived and has duly replaced the old one. That turned out not to be too tricky. After unsoldering the original switch I bent the leads so the body of the switch would be as close as possible to the wall of the compartment for the electronics and soldered it back in.

I’d also bought a holder for two AAA batteries. There’s plenty of room for it inside the battery compartment. In the long run I might actually move it elsewhere, but it will do for now. I unsoldered the “leads” used to hold the original 3V battery in place and replaced them with the leads for the holder making sure to maintain the same polarity. An equally easy job.

Finally, because I wasn’t really sure if the original magnet was up to snuff any more, I ordered some round neodymium magnets, 2mm diameter by 1mm thick. I was originally thinking that I might have to fix them to the opposite side of the tipping buckets from the original magnet and turn the buckets around. However, it then occurred to me that there was room to put some on the end of the existing magnet, so I decided to give that a go:

A quick test suggested that would work, so I put a couple of batteries in the holder, reassembled everything to the point where I could test it and plugged it in. Initial test suggest the sensing of the bucket tipping works fine. I can actually even here the reed switch actuating. Unplugging and the unit and reconnecting it several minutes later also shows the counters maintaining their values when there’s no external power, so that’s looking good too.

Tomorrow I shall finish reassembly and then check the bucket sizes by dripping water in with a syringe. Once that’s done I think it can go back up 🙂

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Swimming, 22nd November 2021

Posted on November 22, 2021 by james

I ran out of time yesterday so wasn’t able to swim and in fact I felt exceptionally tired too. I can’t claim that I felt that much better today, but off I went anyhow. It’s been the first really cold day of the winter and usually the pool is quite chilly when that happens, but for the first time in quite a few years I was pleasantly surprised to find the water no colder than normal.

The 50m reps were quite tough and I struggled to keep them below 43s, ending up with four or five over. I’m not very happy about that. Hopefully I can get it back under control when I swim later in the week.

The 25m reps weren’t so bad though. Not quite as fast as I’d like to have seen them, but easily within half a second. Given that I wasn’t really feeling completely on it I think I can take that for today.

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