Is my In Home Display (IHD) displaying the wrong time?

I did not and that (though happy it’s ‘fixed’) worries me. 

The only SR’s that have gone to your meter over the past few days are you’re read requests. 

I was just getting information together to unpair and repair @jewelie ‘s device but now I’m not sure that’s the solution. Is your IHD still showing the incorrect time Jewelie? 

Thanks @BenS_OVO 

Well yes, I do now have some gas readings displayed on my Usage pages. But I’m not at all confident in the data that’s being presented.

I have assumed that the Comms Hub retains the 30-minute gas readings until OVO is once again able to retrieve them. So, Ben, when you prodded my Comms Hub yesterday (26th) you therefore retrieved four days of readings.

I find it very hard to believe that all of those days just happened to have precisely the same gas usage to two decimal points!

So let’s inspect those graphs (except Weds 25th which isn’t available to me)

      Please forgive the crude scaling to align the vertical kWh readings.

Now, I simply don’t believe these usage graphs to be true.

Firstly, there seems to be a considerable variation in the pattern. We wouldn’t expect this. All of these days had bright sunshine so my solar hot-water panels would be supplying almost all required heating from 10:00 to 16:00 ish.

Secondly, there are numerous readings which are completely absent. The 22nd has nothing after 16:30, the 23rd finishes at 19:30, and the 24th is blank from 2pm onwards.

Then there’s an amazing slide downwards from 3am to 1pm on 26th where the software has no data to go on!

So there’s something seriously amiss.

Either the Usage software is averaging the uncollected data across 5 days, resulting in the 59.26kWh each which I’m being billed for …

… or else it has real half-hour data which it can use to construct graphs for at least four of these days.

But both scenarios cannot simultaneously be valid!

@BenS_OVO- please feel free to change the software in my Comms Hub and meters while we try to find out what happening.

@jewelieand @Jon Langford do you have the same version of the Usage graphs as I’m seeing online? Or are you both on the earlier software?

Thanks @Jon Langford 

And do your Usage graphs and data format look to be a similar  to mine?

Or are you on the earlier User Interface?

Thanks @jewelie - so let’s tag @Tim_OVO in the hope that he can retrieve your message from the anti-Spam bin asap.

I know the bug you’re referring to in the Forum software (Insided). I used to get messages rejected almost daily. Darran and I spent months trying to isolate what was the likely cause, but failed to do so.

I don’t think it’s related to the number or size of screenshots, but in the process of investigation I decided that I would try to make my graphics as friendly as possible to the software. Thus I edit them in advance to be no more than 800pixels wide, and preferably below 630 (which is currently the default for graphics display).

As I use so many advanced features in my Forum responses (colors, graphics, internal links and external URLs) I’m currently using a different permissions to others. But that’s not a long-term solution. The bug needs to be isolated and fixed by Insided’s staff.

Try editing your graphics as I’ve suggested and then re-post. If you succeed, then send a PM to Tim asking him to delete the earlier copy in the Spam-bin.

Hi @Jon Langford - That, to me, looks like a different/earlier User Interface to what I have.

You’re also showing electricity readings on that graph, aren’t you?

I’m looking at gas because I was noticing electricity readings being picked up by OVO overnight, whilst the gas wasn’t. That would indicate a break in data transfer between the actual gas meter and the “gas proxy”, which is within the Comms Hub. But such a ZigBee communication failure wasn’t indicated in the places I would expect to find it.

There’s no such issue with a SMETS2 electricity meter because it directly transfers data to/fro the Comms Hub via the Intimate Connector.

I think we’d need to know a great deal more about your electricity usage before we could draw any conclusions about the graph you’ve posted above. I can think of a number of reasons why a sudden drop at Noon would be valid.

Could you start by:

a: completing your Forum Profile so that us fellow customers can at least see the basic information about you and your usage

b: giving us an idea of what technical background/interest you have?

As you will have noticed, @BenS_OVO isn’t afraid of throwing technical terms in our direction; and last week @jewelie posted here:

  Monkeying about with tech is my idea of relaxation and fun, so absolutely yes!  :)

  (tbh It’s the main reason we got a smart meter…  gadget-lust!)

So our “techie” background enables us to quickly evaluate whether the data we’re seeing is derived from a “fair test” or not!

Moreover, we aren’t going to be too worried if Ben throws new software into our Comms Hubs which totally messes things up, because we’d still be able to work out if our Billing was correct or not. (And yes, Ben has crashed my Comms Hub before!). Being a test-site comes with attached risks.

Thanks @Jon Langford - and you live in a beautiful area of the country!

And with your professional background you will have the level of technical knowledge to keep up with @BenS_OVO ‘s techie-shorthand. And, unlike the majority of the UK population, you will at least know the difference between a kW and a kWh.

So as it was from Excel, I’m unsurprised I didn’t recognise the style of graph.

Can you grab a screenshot of the Usage Graph from your MyOVO page from a day either side of the above? That will enable us to compare against another typical day under similar weather conditions.

How long have you had SMETS2 meters?

When you look at the gas usage, are you seeing any half-hour (HH) data missing from the table?

What about consecutive HH slots with identical readings, such as I’m seeing?

Are you still reading this Topic @BenS_OVO ?

I’m eager to get these readings sorted because it’s impossible for OVO to make progress towards any Time Of Use tariff unless you can rely on the half-hourly usage being reported correctly.

Thanks @Tim_OVO 

I think there are several “issues” here. Not just one.

• one meter (of 2) no longer sending readings back to OVO
• one meter no longer sending updates to the IHD, although readings are available online
• periods with meters reporting zero usage
• consecutive periods with identical usage being reported
• massively large readings within a period where there are no other readings

We really need to separate these out so that we are better able to report faults. That’s why we need @BenS_OVO to say which ones you’re already onto… and which ones still lack sufficient feedback for you to identify.

I don’t fully understand this.

And I also think there’s quite a bit of “information gathering” which can be done before anyone gets back in the Lab to start tinkering.

Three of us here (@Jon Langford , @jewelie and myself) and three more over here (@Wigwam66 , @pauleywauley and @Tiamun) are reporting similar combinations of faults with SMETS2 meters, all of which are communications failures.

Over the past 8 months, @BenS_OVO has picked up such faults, done some lab analysis, and then sent a SMETS command or a code update to an individual site which has resulted in a “fix”. So his tactics have been met with some reasonable level of success.

However, the combinations of these faults aren’t diminishing.

Whilst we have the time, and no one is in the SMETS Lab2, can we not use this Forum space to check through the symptoms we’re seeing in an attempt to define which might be inter-related?

We’d need someone like Ben to ask us for clarifications so that there’s a check-list prepared in advance of lab-time.

If OVO needs to know something like “does it always do it at the same hour or on the same day?” then we can answer that now.

I have a sneaky suspicion that some of the faults we’ve been reporting have got fixed “by accident” as Ben (or another Team Member) has manually sent a SMETS command. See here earlier in this Topic where Ben is “surprised” he fixed something!

Well I for one, and probably @jewelie too, would be quite happy for a command to be sent now. We can then report which faults if any have been changed/fixed.

We don’t need lab-time to do this.

I don’t favour each of us trying to report faults separately via the standard CS email address. That looses the advantage of us pooling our feedback together.

The Forum is a great platform for us to make progress on this.

What do you think @Tim_OVO ?

I don’t know if someone at OVO has been experimenting with sending SMETS Commands yesterday evening (16apr20), but there have been significant failures of my HAN and Mesh networks starting sometime after 8pm.

My IHD has been resetting itself, displaying the “three lights on”, followed by the network ID and “Welcome” messages.

It then mainly sulks with the display showing “Waiting for current data”, occasionally alternating with “Connection lost”.

Every so often the cycle repeats, starting again with “3 lights on”.

Since there’s no clock and the Zigbee signal strength is at minimum, I had a look at the indicators on the Comms Hub.

To my surprise, the HAN indicator was still showing the usual slow-flash pattern.

However, the MESH indicator is on the Medium flash. (I have an SKU2)

So with changes to two networks, I suspect this is due to a code update or SMETS Command, rather than a Comms Hub failure.

What do you think @BenS_OVO ?

Have you or your colleagues been tinkering?

Can you detect at your end the symptoms which I’m seeing here?

Well yes @Nancy_OVO - as it happens, my IHD was again yielding the correct data and my Mesh Network was once more on slow-flash yesterday (Sunday) morning.

But how did you know the issue had resolved itself?

I’m pretty sure Ben does know how to get at my meters because he ran through a number of code upgrades last year whilst we were trying to debug something else.

But, like him (see above), I’m wary of things just sorting themselves out. The frequency of these communication problems is increasing - 3 active threads on the Forum at the moment. And I believe this is the first occasion that a Mesh Network has claimed to have failed.

Us customers would like to provide better accuracy in our reporting. But we have absolutely no idea what OVO can detect of these issues. We need a feedback mechanism to help nail this down.

Hi @Transparent - I’m sure Ben does know how to access your account but members of staff wouldn’t be randomly doing this without the explicit permission of the account holder. I’m sure he was granted this when he called you last year.