Chameleon ivie Bud In Home Display (IHD) - an honest review

It is a shame the device doesn't yet have real time integration with an ivie app or Smartthings or an api.

Consumers are still left with few mainstream options for getting real time smart meter energy usage info onto anything but an IHD. The Glow IHD is an option for example. 

I am not sure how many customers would actually make use of real time info, but i expect it will increase in the future. 

It feels to me like it would have been better for Chameleon to delay launching the device until they had more features ready.

They also mention an integration with uswitch in the future, which may be useful to assess what time of use tariff would be best based on customers real time usage. For the time being there are few tariffs available anyway. 

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My ivie Bud arrived today. Said all I needed was a Smartphone and a recent energy bill.Tried to set it up and got as far as uploading a recent bill with all the info they wanted. It rejected this but after several failed attempts decided to try and get the ball rolling via my PC. It worked first time and obviously a six page bill is far easier to upload on a PC than a Smartphone.  It took two minutes to connect to my smart meters downstairs and although I thought I was going to have to input all my tariff information it was there already. Also, my weekly and monthly totals as well. I was quite gobsmacked. After one hour, I can’t praise this highly enough and hope my mind isn’t changed during the forthcoming hours, days and weeks.  Highly recommended .

I have had my bud since 5th March, and it will not activate, it goes through the process of trying to join my smart meter then reboots back to the Wi-Fi connection screen, click continue and it is stuck at the activation screen again.

I have emailed customer care a few times, last response was on 8th March saying they have escalated it to technical team, but no reply since, I am not an OVO customer.

Chameleon did mention they’ve been swamped with emails recently. That might be why.

Hang in there for now, they should respond within a few days from now.

Hi @FredG ,

I feel your pain there. For me, the biggest annoyance is the lack of an internal battery, especially since the ivie Bud is based on the Chameleon IHD7 and all previous models like the IHD1, IHD2, IHD3 and IHD6 have always featured one. I could actually see a void in the case where would have been a battery - even the built-in display backlight makes that pretty obvious. To opt-out of the services you’ll want to contact the support team and put a request in to opt-out of the Chameleon Cloud platform and request to return the device. They can be a little slow to reply, but they do respond eventually. It’s most likely just because they’re getting swamped and to be fair, Chameleon has historically never really done any customer support.

If you’re returning the device, please do a Full Reset before you box it back up. The option to do so can be found in the settings menu.

I’ve already spoken to them about some of your other points and I’m waiting for a reply on them - the lack of MPAN setup is a huge pain if you ask me and I’ve suggested they fix that.

Samsung SmartThings support with the ivie Bud is a future feature and they do disclose this fact on the website. Either way, all IHD CAD functionality relies on some kind of cloud services to process the data. There is no way of getting around that which I’m aware of and given that I work in cybersecurity myself… I’m unlikely to recommend any because 99.999% of the visitors to this forum are nowhere near as tech savvy as I am. I’m afraid I can’t risk having users break their stuff and complaining about not being able to fix it because they don't know what they just did.

As for the cloud stuff, I’m afraid it’s mandatory to use their cloud platform in order to set it up and this is for a good reason - it’s the only way that Chameleon are able to pair the ivie Bud to your meter without involving your supplier and it’s the same for the Hildebrand Glow. The DCC Other User role requires authentication and verification to be done first and it’s impossible to do that over the phone for example. The only workaround is to use an IHD that comes from your energy supplier as these can be paired without internet access.

As for rolling your own? Sorry, but that’s completely impossible. DCC and the NCSC won’t allow it for security reasons because Smart Meters are considered part of critical national infrastructure so you’d get stuck in 50 years of red tape. I can see the concept you’re thinking of, but sadly I don’t see it ever becoming a reality because chances are very few people would actually use it.

I just wonder why why we cannot have a kind of serial port from the meters/communication device, just like all European countries do for decades now.

Well, probably because the NCSC is a thing in the UK and not elsewhere so the other countries that allow this don’t have the expertise that the UK has. It was their decision to ban such capability in Smart Meters. The ability to connect your smartphone directly to an S2 meter via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth was explored though, but ultimately rejected because it wasn’t possible to do it securely and reliably. In fairness, not everyone has a suitable smartphone either. After all, you cannot hack a device via a mechanism that doesn’t exist on it.

To be honest, there’s also the safety element. The last thing you want to do with an electric meter that’s got 240v running through it, is expose a metal port to the end user. I’ve already heard too many horror stories about countries that equip electric meters with serial ports that caused electric shocks - and it quickly becomes obvious why optical ports are used instead for meters destined for the UK, especially in cases where the meter lives outside and weather is a factor. In the UK, the optical port is also disabled for security reasons as well while the meter is in the field. It gets fitted anyway for factory testing and repair purposes and is enabled only in those environments. Any attempt to use the optical port in the field might will likely trigger a tamper alarm with the supplier and these do get investigated.

With that being said, the regular Chameleon IHDs that are NOT the ivie Bud do not require Chameleon Cloud stuff and in fact, don’t even talk to it at all in a default configuration outside of getting firmware updates every so often, if the supplier is subscribed to firmware update services. I’ve got two Chameleon IHD6-CAD-PPMIDs that I call the Kecleon Brothers and both have Wi-Fi access. Because the CAD features aren’t active, they never really talk to anyone and I’ve verified this using tcpdump in my UniFi Dream Machine, Exploud. In actual fact, the Kecleon Brothers chat with Exploud a lot when they’re active, but almost all of that activity is just basic network stuff, DNS, DHCP and the other basic protocols to maintain a connection at all.

It’s actually impossible to get real-time usage data with just DCC Other User and you also can’t realistically pull Half-Hourly data for the current day either via DCC - only historical data is available. In order to grab live data, a CAD (Consumer Access Device) enabled IHD is required. On top of that, the only way to communicate with a Smart Meter in the UK is by the use of SMETS Commands and these all go via DCC for SMETS2 (and SMETS1 meters will all do the same too, once that migration is completed). No IHD has Bluetooth support that I know of and nor does any Comms Hub.

For me personally, it makes sense to prevent the ivie Bud being re-sold on eBay and Amazon. Chameleon probably has to follow some kind of rule about what they’re allowed to do with these devices and the ToS and FAQ both warn you that the device can only be used at the installation address it was sent to. I already see way too many nightmares that are caused by that activity and I strongly discourage buying IHDs from those places because you don’t know the history of the device. However, I’ve suggested the ability to at least re-arm the same device on the same site in the event you accidentally nuke it with a Full Reset. I would hope that becomes possible at some point.

The NCSC also enforces a rule as part of the specifications that there cannot be any way to hook up anything to a Smart Meter locally outside of the ZigBee HAN. Even the Comms Hub uses a “wired” connection to the electric meter for power only, data is still sent between them over the HAN.

As for access via DCC Other User, it’s retained during a Change of Supplier flow, but the SMETS Command Restrict Access for Change of Tenancy boots out ALL DCC Other Users when a Change of Tenancy flow is triggered, such as when you’re moving home and close your account. This process nukes all encryption keys and security keys for everyone with DCC Other User that had them on your meters and fully disconnects them. DCC also makes sure that it’s taken care of as well. There’s currently no other way to check the status of your grants that I know of. Would be a useful feature though.

Ultimately, if the ivie Bud actually worked for me, I’d have probably been willing to lend Chameleon a hand with bug blasting as that’s something I’m pretty skilled at. If you remember the “spinning circle of death bug” in the OVO Energy app from last year, that was partially my fault but it’s been fixed since then - simple case of me not reading CodePush documentation properly before suggesting a fix to another bug that I managed to help OVO fix! Alas, I couldn’t even get it to work because of my unique circumstances and I’ve never managed to get any DCC Other User to access Raichu’s data. It seems only OVO, DCC and Western Power Distribution are able to do that… XD

Actually, it’s much safer to run Smart Meters using a private network infrastructure that never touches the public internet.

I don’t want to drag this thread too far off track though, but the topic is well discussed in various threads on the forum. If you search for some relevant search terms on the built-in search system, you should uncover them pretty quickly.

I can also say this much. The intention is that all IHDs remain behind when you move home, so there should already be one when you move in with an existing Smart Meter in place. The second hand market only exists at all primarily because people run off with them and try to sell them later on, whether or not they realise that the IHD should have been left with the original meters…

For the most part, the IHD will continue to work across suppliers as well. There’s a few edge cases, but I’ve got a whole book of diagnostic tricks I can pull off if needed - and OVO’s Support Team has even more at their disposal.

I’m afraid not. Converting cubic metres to kilowatt hours for gas metering purposes is complicated and varies based on a lot of factors. Doing it reliably is impossible for an IHD like the ivie Bud and would drain too much battery on a gas meter.

@Blastoise186 

I was wondering about a serial port precisely to avoid having the meter connected on the internet via IHD, or to have my real-time data consumption data updated on the cloud. I guess we agree that keeping off the internet is a good idea. I don’t think any electricity infrastructure for meters in the world are running on Internet directly, that would be very insecure indeed. I was just wondering in case of very advanced use case real-time, where you'd need to check or guess the price of electricity in advance to charge an EV for instance, which might depend on the wind in UK, then I'll probably have a part of my system connected on the internet anyway.

Thanks for clarifying that the IHD should be kept in the house when you move. I’d be really tempted to take it with me anyway, as it'd show the whole consumption history until that "Restrict Access for Change of Tenancy" that people won't see when they move probably. But there would be no way I leave a £45 Ivie Bud I paid with my own money to the next tenant, I would keep it and moved along to my next MPAN. Or thrown to the bin if this cannot be used again.

@Chris J  I just reviewed what I had on mine. Indeed, it only showed the standing fees for the gas, electricity works as expected. It took like 5 days for the Bright app to get info on the gas, maybe it’d be the same for you? And indeed, I think gas meters can only measure volumes, so the energy and price need to be given by the supplier somehow. But I find it strange it wouldn’t be provided. I would strongly suggest you to try the Bright app, there is a homeassistant integration and quite openAPI to get all your smart-meter  historical data in volume and price in 30mins timeslot.

My IVIE Bud displays gas usage in £££ correctly...

That’s me…. also IVIE Bud stil suffers connection problems/dropuot the same as my Chameleon 3. Be it software, interference, poor link budget I’ll never get to know. They both have to sit in the garage ( 2M from the HUB) until they finally rejoin properly and show data. Then I move them back into the lounge where it’s actually useful to have them…. In the garage it’s pointless. How long they last before they drop out again is anyones guess as is how long they take to rejoin properly….