Solar

[TexasBill]

I have a number of solar panels installed and would really like to know when I am"making more electricity than I am using.

I have egauge installed so I can visually see on my computer - but I would like to do things like:

1. turn the thermostat up or down based on if I am making solar or not.

2. allowing certain things to run if the sun is out.

Is anyone aware of a way to determine if the meter is spinning one way ot the other? if the solar is making money or you are using more than you are making?

 

Thank in advance for any ideas.

Bill

 

 

[Control4Savant]

http://www.chowmainsoft.com/egauge-eg3000 

The solar/energy company should be able to give your grid usage.

[alanchow]

eGauge CT clamps are polarity sensitive.  As such it will tell you if you are importing or exporting if you clamp the incoming mains.

Note if you are three phase then set up a register with the sum of all three phases.

The driver will import the data for all registers so you can program against them in Control4 to say super heat your hot water if you are exporting energy or to load shed if you are importing too much.

[zaphod]

One really good use of this would be to charge your EV when you are generating excess power.  That should be doable if someone wrote drivers for EV - Tesla has an open API.  

[TexasBill]

OK - I purchased the driver - 

It has TWO c4z files in it - Neither one can be added to the project.

Not sure which one to try to add but neither one will add - it throws an error and does not add it to the project.

Technical support does not seem to be in today.

Any thoughts would help me greatly as I would like to get this working.

Thanks,

Bill

 

[alanchow]

4 hours ago, TexasBill said:

OK - I purchased the driver - 

It has TWO c4z files in it - Neither one can be added to the project.

Not sure which one to try to add but neither one will add - it throws an error and does not add it to the project.

Technical support does not seem to be in today.

Any thoughts would help me greatly as I would like to get this working.

Thanks,

Bill

 

Restart composer as broker is disconnected.

Also one is the older driver and the new one which is written for eGauge Pro / Core will also work on the EG3000 but is written to grab registers rather than individual CTs like the old one did.

[TexasBill]

17 minutes ago, alanchow said:

Restart composer as broker is disconnected.

Also one is the older driver and the new one which is written for eGauge Pro / Core will also work on the EG3000 but is written to grab registers rather than individual CTs like the old one did.

Flawless! Thanks.

It updated just great.

Now I need to develop some programming to use it. Where is the best documentation for this?

I have read the documentation Chowmain web site - here is what I am looking for:

Pseudo Code follows:

If I have (or am) making solar above my current usage then set the COOL set point on my thermostat to 72. If I am not currently making more than i am using set the set point to 78. 

 

I would like to be able to set the polling interval to every 30 minutes - (unless someone says that some other interval would be more productive?

Can anyone tell me how to use this driver as above?

 

Bill

[Control4Savant]

2 hours ago, TexasBill said:

Flawless! Thanks.

It updated just great.

Now I need to develop some programming to use it. Where is the best documentation for this?

I have read the documentation Chowmain web site - here is what I am looking for:

Pseudo Code follows:

If I have (or am) making solar above my current usage then set the COOL set point on my thermostat to 72. If I am not currently making more than i am using set the set point to 78. 

 

I would like to be able to set the polling interval to every 30 minutes - (unless someone says that some other interval would be more productive?

Can anyone tell me how to use this driver as above?

 

Bill

I am not sure if you are aware.. but one of the posters responding is who you purchased the driver from. 

[TexasBill]

9 hours ago, AVNeeds said:

I am not sure if you are aware.. but one of the posters responding is who you purchased the driver from. 

Yes - Alan Chow - he is very good. I just need to get some documentation or examples on how to use it - I have read the posted documentation and it does not give me enough - sorry for my ignorance on this - 

 

I THINK that I PROBABLY need to set up a 30 minute polling of the eGAUGE.

BUT - There are about 8-10 variables that have names that i am not sure what they map to. 

Then there are max and minimum amounts that I need to set and I am not sure what the units are.

What I specifically want to know is: when am I "making more energy than I am using"?  If I can get an example of how to accomplish this I can probably figure out the rest.

 

 

[TexasBill]

OK - I am extremely happy.

Alan Chow's driver is fantastic. It works a treat - the documentation is not great and it is difficult to get support from Australia - but he makes a good driver.

Here is the scenario -

I get free electricity after 8 pm and before 6 AM every day 7 days a week. I have solar panels so if we have sun, then I get free electricity during the day - this means that I don't get PAID for my EXCESS electricity - I get to give it back for free, but - I now only pay for 6 AM to when the sun comes up and sunset to 8 PM.

Here is what I have done -

1. install the driver

2. Set the IP address of the eGauge

3. Set the register to total generation

4. in Composer you simply indicate that when the "poll" is successful you want to determine "If the total generation is greater than the total usage" then

5. now I have one light ini the center of our living area that is now the "indicator light".  If we are generating more than we are using it comes on, and if it is after 8 pm and before 6 AM it comes on. It is an LED light so it should not cost more than $1.00 per year to run this.

The really cool thing now is that we have a visual way to know if we are paying or if the electricity is free.

This absolutely works and is really a game changer for me because I used to be that I had to look it up on my phone o my wife did when she wanted to know if she could run the dishwasher or dryer or oven etc (or ask me to do so).

Thank you Alan Chow!

 

 

 

 

[HRT]

another way you could notify yourself without having to have a light on would be to change a color of a keypad button from green to red or whatever colors you like, or change all the colors on all of your dimmers using the LED wizard driver. This is if you had control4 dimmers/keypads.

[TexasBill]

7 hours ago, HRT said:

another way you could notify yourself without having to have a light on would be to change a color of a keypad button from green to red or whatever colors you like, or change all the colors on all of your dimmers using the LED wizard driver. This is if you had control4 dimmers/keypads.

i have dimmers and keypads everywhere but have never found that changing the colors on those to be easy or helpful.

My wife cannot sleep in our bedroom unless I turn off all the lights on the switches - yes - we have 30 in the bedroom but I have to run a routine every evening to turn them all off and then turn them back on again every morning.  The routine is several pages of code.  Even using the Wizard it does not make itself easy - do you know a cool way to do that?

 

The thing I like about this method is that one can see from anywhere in the main living area if we are making energy or not.

[ILoveC4]

7 minutes ago, TexasBill said:

i have dimmers and keypads everywhere but have never found that changing the colors on those to be easy or helpful.

My wife cannot sleep in our bedroom unless I turn off all the lights on the switches - yes - we have 30 in the bedroom but I have to run a routine every evening to turn them all off and then turn them back on again every morning.  The routine is several pages of code.  Even using the Wizard it does not make itself easy - do you know a cool way to do that?

 

The thing I like about this method is that one can see from anywhere in the main living area if we are making energy or not.

I’d just create a macro. 30 switches in your bedroom? Dang bro - that’s crazy. 

[Neo1738]

On 4/1/2020 at 9:30 PM, ILoveC4 said:

I’d just create a macro. 30 switches in your bedroom? Dang bro - that’s crazy. 

Seriously love to know what they all do that having a TS wouldn't be more beneficial for. 

[TexasBill]

Well - to be honest I think that my house was the first house that my installer had ever done on this magnitude.

Every single thing that this house can turn on has a switch for it.  Since you can come in and go out of the living room we duplicated all the switches so that if the home automation did not go well or in ten years no longer worked you would still be able to turn on and off lights manually.

So - in the master bedroom:

1. hot tub power

2. hot tub lights

3. loggia lights

4. lights to the hot tub

5. outside landscaping lights in the front of house

6. outside landscaping lights in the back

7.  downights in front of house

8. down lights in back of house

9. upper rope lights in bedroom

10. lower rope light in bedroom

11. ceiling fan

12 lights in entryway to bedroom 

13. down lights in bedroom

14. power for camera over the hot tub

15. lights over head of the bed.

16. lights over pictures/paintings in bedroom

17. Blind controls (open and close)

 

Note: 

The above are on MY side of the bed

They are duplicated on my wifes side of the bed.

There are also some of these on entrance to the bedroom as well. So I was a little shy on the actual number.

Bill

 

 

 

[msgreenf]

That sounds awful and ugly. Sorry.

[Neo1738]

Agree with msgreenf, sounds terribly unsightly. I get the purpose but definitely better ways to do that. 

[Cyknight]

Install a nice zebrawood panel to cover all of those with a cutout for a touchscreen on either side of the bed....

 

Even if Control4 ever stops existing, there have been solutions in place could have replaced it if push came to shove for longer than the term 'smarthome' has existed.

 

Sounds a lot like your dealer was in over his head at the time, though kudos to them I suppose as it's all still working!

[msgreenf]

Can you tell us more about switch 14?

[TexasBill]

1 hour ago, msgreenf said:

Can you tell us more about switch 14?

I can't its too ugly <grin>.

Well - here is the issue - when I did all of this I did not know much about Control 4. My installer did not know much about it either. One of the caveats I gave him and my electrician was that if I ever wanted to sell the house and the person buying it did not want Control 4 or an automated house I wanted the ability to manually control everything. So Everything has a switch to control it.

While we can turn on and off all the items in our house - we don't usually even remember what the switches are for or where a specific switch is - everything operates automatically on schedule or on occupancy/motion or temperature etc.

The master bedroom is fairly large - probably about 650-700 square feet

That speaks to ugly.

Now about switch 14. I have a wireless camera that looks over the hot tub. You can imagine that when someone is in the hot tub that there might be times when you ant no video monitoring of the area?

So - I can:

1. turn on the jets,

2. turn on the lights

3. turn on the heater

4. turn off the camera

and when the temperature is 100 degrees it announces in the house that the Spa is ready for occupancy.

5. I turn on the cameras power automatically after I power off the ho tub.

Is that what you were thinking I was doing with it?

I uploaded a picture of what the spa camera "sees" and you can see that it would record the user on the way to and from the spa.

Bill

 

 

 

[TexasBill]

1 hour ago, Cyknight said:

Install a nice zebrawood panel to cover all of those with a cutout for a touchscreen on either side of the bed....

 

Even if Control4 ever stops existing, there have been solutions in place could have replaced it if push came to shove for longer than the term 'smarthome' has existed.

 

Sounds a lot like your dealer was in over his head at the time, though kudos to them I suppose as it's all still working!

Things are working a treat - I work with my dealer now on programming and new ideas etc to enhance the new installation and new ideas. The installation is fairly large - We utilize almost everything that Control4 has except touch screens.

Since very few things need human interaction in the house (almost everything is motion driven or schedule driven or audio/voice riven) we do not use touch screens and have no incentive to have them.

Things that we have in the house -

1. conditional voice announcements - some examples are - someone is in the driveway, the mail has arrived, it is raining, the garage door has been left open and cannot be closed due to blockage, the garage door has closed, The garage left garage door is opening. The garage door has closed, the garage door will be closing in two minutes, (there are three garage doors.

2. seal the house automatically by locking and closing all openings

3. reminders to turn on alarms if both of us have left

4. closing open windows automatically

5. letting us know when we are making enough solar to turn on dish washer or cook, or whshing machine/dryer etc.

6. automatically turning on and off lights

7. turning on or off fans depending on the internal temperature of the house

8. setting all thermostats set point automatically.

9. voice control of lights in rooms

10 party mode makes changes in houses behaviors

11. video an audio switching between 8 different sources and supplying this video to any of about 10 televisions in the house.

12. entire house audio that is voice controlled

13. LED lighting through out entire house and support for color lights around outside of house, landscaping, inside house and rope lights around outside of house.

14. control of solar screens if the sun is coming in or not

15. automatic water shut off if leak detected (FloLogic integration)

16. Alarm system integration

17.outside floods integration

18. garage door integration

These are a few of the integrations

 

 

[ILoveC4]

On 4/4/2020 at 6:32 AM, TexasBill said:

Well - to be honest I think that my house was the first house that my installer had ever done on this magnitude.

Every single thing that this house can turn on has a switch for it.  Since you can come in and go out of the living room we duplicated all the switches so that if the home automation did not go well or in ten years no longer worked you would still be able to turn on and off lights manually.

So - in the master bedroom:

1. hot tub power

2. hot tub lights

3. loggia lights

4. lights to the hot tub

5. outside landscaping lights in the front of house

6. outside landscaping lights in the back

7.  downights in front of house

8. down lights in back of house

9. upper rope lights in bedroom

10. lower rope light in bedroom

11. ceiling fan

12 lights in entryway to bedroom 

13. down lights in bedroom

14. power for camera over the hot tub

15. lights over head of the bed.

16. lights over pictures/paintings in bedroom

17. Blind controls (open and close)

 

Note: 

The above are on MY side of the bed

They are duplicated on my wifes side of the bed.

There are also some of these on entrance to the bedroom as well. So I was a little shy on the actual number.

Bill

 

 

 

I kind of hate to ask, but I'm dying to see. Can you take a picture of "your side of the bed" and share? I cannot imagine what 17 light switches next to a bed look like. Are they stacked like 4 different 4 gang boxes one on top of each other? Like a cube? A bunch of boxes side by side in a row?

[TexasBill]

9 hours ago, ILoveC4 said:

I kind of hate to ask, but I'm dying to see. Can you take a picture of "your side of the bed" and share? I cannot imagine what 17 light switches next to a bed look like. Are they stacked like 4 different 4 gang boxes one on top of each other? Like a cube? A bunch of boxes side by side in a row?

18 - is my side of the bed

19 is the entrance to the master bedroom

20 is my wife's side of the bed

21 is be the loggia doors

22 is the entrance to the master bath

23 is the other side of the entrance to the master bath and controls the sauna

24 is also by the entrance to the master bath and controls the Rinnai instant hot water heaters, the master suite thermostat and the hot tub controls

All in all I think 26 total light switches, some control more than one light as they are joined to perform multiple functions based on how many times you push them up or down. They also change colors depending on what is engaged and not engaged - although I had to stop this practice - just too many options and the human cannot keep up with it. 

I attached a few other pictures - the outside lights can do 1.3 million colors and are LED 

The loggia is a picture with the solar shades down

There are a couple of pictures with the master bedroom showing the television that comes out of the base of the bed.

The crowns at the head of the bed are because my last name is King. grin

. 

 

[ILoveC4]

You've got a beautiful property there. I like the exterior lighting - I do some similar things inside but didn't outside (yet). That's a lot of light switches

[TexasBill]

It overlooks a 29 mile lake. I would only be able to afford this property in Texas. 

Thank you for your comments. 

Yes - it is a lot of switches.

I really don't use many of them manually - the house does most if not all the work.

Bill