2/4/6 CH Energy Meter Made For ESPHome

[Roving-Ronin]

Hi @tarontop @athom-tech

Any idea if these new Energy Meter can be run on 12/24/48V DC power sources?
These units would be a great option for people wanting to monitor power/energy etc in places like caravans (12/24V DC) or remote sites operating on 48V DC, that all have things like solar and batteries that are wanted to be monitored.

BTW are there any 'spare' GPIO pin that could be used to create UART and wire in things like Victron MPPT also ?

Thanks.

[tarontop]

The current hardware circuit does not support DC voltage measurement. The PCB board leads to 6 available GPIOs (IO2, IO3, IO4, IO5, IO6, IO18)

[pumo2019]

We checked and found that there is indeed a logical error in the order of the labels, but you said that after connecting the 6 CT calipers correctly, 4 of them produced negative readings. I think this is not accurate. It should all produce negative readings or positive readings.

your CT connection are wrong way, at least what are in little manual what came with meter. In there was to put all reds in S1 and blacks to S2.
I am also interested that 3phase, I just got this device but it wont work, counts power readings wrong, ex current is 2,9Amps power is 20-30W (all the time), I have connected first three (CT1-CT3) to incoming phases.

[Roving-Ronin]

I am also interested that 3phase, I just got this device but it wont work, counts power readings wrong, ex current is 2,9Amps power is 20-30W (all the time), I have connected first three (CT1-CT3) to incoming phases.

@pumo2019

The way that the BL09906 component (Docs: https://esphome.io/components/sensor/bl0906.html | Component Code: https://github.com/esphome/esphome/tree/dev/esphome/components/bl0906 ) is written is 'wrong' (IMHO - Sorry Aiden) as it assumes that ALL the CT's are connected to internal power circuits and then calculates the Total_Energy and Total_Power sensors on this basis.

So if your trying to use the Energy Meter 2/4/6 to monitor:

• 1 Phase - The main/grid feed + 1 internal circuit (say Solar, if you don't have the OEM consumption meter with the inverter)
• 3 Phase - The main/grid feed (3 xCT) + 3 internal circuits (say solar + hot water + GPO)
  then this meter, in its current 'from the box' setup from Athom will NOT work, as you desire.

Whilst a total rewrite of the BL0906 component would be great, to add support in the YAML to have a setting for 'is CT internal vs Mains' and then dynamically update the Total_Energy and Total_Power based upon Internal and/or Mains. In the interim you have to work out totally reworking the Energy Meter via YAML.

I have a mate who wanted to use one of these for 3p (Mains and 3 Internal Circuits) monitoring. The code I wrote for him is at: https://github.com/JAComms/MyHomeAssistant/blob/main/esphome/athom-energy-meter-x6.yaml

Note: CT 1/2/3 are connected to Mains Phase 1/2/3 and CT 4/5/6 are used for internal circuits. If you want to try flashing your device with this, it call be called using the following YAML configuration on your device config. Just update the 'ct_sensor_#_name' subsitutions to reflect what/where you have installed CT4-6.

If @tarontop / @athom-tech wanted to add an 'official' release of this at: https://github.com/athom-tech/esp32-configs i.e. athom-energy-monitor-x6.yaml ?

Sorry I don't have access to mates device currently, otherwise I'd paste a screenshot of the updated webserver and sensors.

substitutions:
  name: "energy-meter"
  # Default friendly name
  friendly_name: "Energy Meter"
  # Description as appears in ESPHome & top of webserver page  
  device_description: "Athom - Energy Meter (BL0906 - 6 channels)"
  # Allows ESP device to be automatically lined to an 'Area' in Home Assistant. Typically used for areas such as 'Lounge Room', 'Kitchen' etc
  location: "Switchboards"
  # The phase in the home power supply, upon which this plug is utilsed. 1p = A. 3p = A, B or C.  (myHome GPO 1 = Phase C, GPO 2 = Phase A, GPO 3 = Phase B)
  power_circuit: "Phase B"  # Which power cicruit is actually powering this device?
  # Hide, by making 'internal', the individual CT's energy sensors
  hide_surplus_energy_sensors: "true"

  # Define logging level: NONE, ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG (Default), VERBOSE, VERY_VERBOSE
  log_level: "DEBUG"

  # Disable sensors recording Grid EXPORTS (i.e. house with no solar installed)
  disable_grid_export_sensors: "true"

  # Names to describe the usage of each CT sensor. i.e. Lights, GPO1, Grid etc. Used to prefix all the associated sensors.
  ct_sensor_1_name: "Grid Phase A"  # CT 1
  ct_sensor_2_name: "Grid Phase B"  # CT 2
  ct_sensor_3_name: "Grid Phase C"  # CT 3
  ct_sensor_4_name: "Kitchen"         # CT 4
  ct_sensor_5_name: "Caravan"         # CT 5
  ct_sensor_6_name: "Float Charger"   # CT 6

#########################################################################

esphome:
  name_add_mac_suffix: false

#########################################################################
#
# Remote Packages to be utilised
#

packages:
  remote_package:
    url: https://github.com/JAComms/myHomeAssistant/
    ref: main 
    files: [esphome/athom-energy-meter-x6.yaml]
    refresh: 0s # optional


#####################################################################

[Roving-Ronin]

@pumo2019

Please note that I'm doing some work atm to update the energy_statistics component that I use to give all the today / yesterday / week / month and year kWh readings. Currently it only updates the week (starting Monday) and Month / Year if its running on the 1st of the Month/Year.
Currently testing changes on a Smart Plug to see if I can get this so it starts calculating these readings even if its a partial week/month/year (but still resets at the start of the next week/month/year at which point you get a full W/M/Y reading).

[tarontop]

We are also researching three-phase electricity. We are initially using the BL0910 chip. I consulted the chip manufacturer and they said it can measure three-phase electricity. However, due to the limited environment where I live and the lack of three-phase electricity, this plan cannot be advanced. The current BL0906 can only measure single-phase electricity.

[Roving-Ronin]

@pumo2019

Got access, here is a screenshot of the local webserver for the sensors section. This is the development branch (not main), as mentioned above this is as I'm working on getting those Week / Month / Year energy sensors to update 'from the date turned on'/partial time periods, not just if you had to running come Monday 00:00am / 1st of Month / 1st of Year.

I'll probably have to change some of the globals storing the readings and then convert the component sensors to internals (to update to globals) then add new published sensors for the energy statistics, that read and publish those globals (that store readings between reboots/reflashing).

There's the usual device / network etc sensors also, but I've cut them out as already has to shrink the page to show the others.

@tarontop psuedo 3phase off a BL0906 ;-)

[pumo2019]

its almost same as we have. Our house is connected three phase grid, not solar at least for now.
What I was going to measure are almost all in different phases. bathroom floorheating, water heater (it is on 3 phase) but I might measure only one or two phase. and if one then last to garage.