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

Lots of info provided here, thanks @jewelie 

It’s a known issue this - I have raised it a few months back, when another forum user flagged it. I have just asked for an update on a fix, or workaround. 

When I hear, I’ll get back to you here :)

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.

An update on the usage issue:

‘We need to further understand the patterns of behaviour. For instance does it always do it at the same hour or on the same day. Does it recover the next day etc. The advice has therefore been that they want us to take this into the lab and test. However given the current environment, we don’t have access to labs. We will therefore have this in our back log until we can regain access.”

For communication issues, I would make sure this isn’t something we know a fix for / can fix remotely send us a message on webchat via the Help Centre.

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’ll pass on the link of this topic onto the engineers, @Transparent - you make a good point. But alas my technically knowledge is limited. 

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?

Hey guys,

I don’t think Ben would have done anything in this instance as he likely doesn’t have access to your account. Unless you’ve called up the Customer Services team, it sounds like the issue has resolved itself 

Cheers!

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.

Hey @Nancy_OVO - I’m still hoping you can tell me:

But how did you know the issue had resolved itself?

If there’s some sort of command that allows you to see my meter status, then that could be the key to resolving this whole problem. 

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.