Hi @creatish 

You have said 

Just something to note that the £20 diffrence for screen vs stick might need to be rethought.

I like the idea of it but something that won’t work is seeing the usage when wifi is down.

 

the screen is local and works with no wifi, so far as I can tell if your troublshooting electric and you turn of the router circuit you ain’t seeing the wattage.

As far as I know these IHDs are communicating via ZigBee (specific for SmartMeters) and not Wifi unless otherwise specified. We agree here.

Question: what has to do turning on/off of anything electric in the house including the Wifi router as long as the Wifi is not required to read real-time power but Zigbee? The reading is affected if Wifi is required for readings but as far as I know again SMETS2 are not Wifi only ZigBee.

P.S: We had Geo Hub monitor which has a led sensor via an Wifi transmitter to the hub (not Zigbee!) and obviously the hub cannot receive readings from the Wifi transmitter as Wifi router which both transmitter and hub are connected via.

In general IHDs are ZigBee as SMETS are ZigBee. Wifi is a completely different dish… ;)

Correct however I think the issue is the integration from let's say bright app with homeasistant is pulling the live data from the grid/your home stick.   

The data goes from meter to stick via ZigBee then from ZigBee to router and the app then to homeasistant 

The integration isn't nativelly pulling from your home router as fair as I'm aware 

But it you have the display you could plug it into power pack and see data still with no WiFi 

To measure any power (W) or energy (Wh) I use some simple Energenie device like pictured.

For example: 2.5W to charge an iPhone. You can do the same with anything which has a plug!

There is no need for CT clamps or very expensive devices and monitors… I would say. It all depends what we want and how to get there.

Next for me is integration with HomeAssistant on RPI either the existing RPI zero w THIS week or very soon Hildebrand Glow.

To measure any power (W) or energy (Wh) I use some simple Energenie device like pictured.

For example: 2.5W to charge an iPhone. You can do the same with anything which has a plug!

There is no need for CT clamps or very expensive devices and monitors… I would say. It all depends what we want and how to get there.

 

Next for me is integration with HomeAssistant on RPI either the existing RPI zero w THIS week or very soon Hildebrand Glow.

 

My parents place had like 400W base load on there Electric, which I could see by just looking on octopus energy yesterday data, looked at lowest 30 min interval then times it by 2 to get the KWH load.

I then went round and power metered ALL devices that would be using idle and could only account for like 200.

This led me to needing a live data so I could chop off the circuits and devices to get it to 0.

you could do this by timing things on the half hour and check next day on octopus, but thats very time consuming.

I’m still in this battle to be honest, my parents just got rid of 200w base load devices and have not seen the daily amount drop by the expect 4-5khw it should have dropped.

I tweaked there thermostat down 1c as its not needed as much and there gas has over doubled.

I really think there SMETS1 meter if buggered at this point, makes no sense

In our household the fridge freezer unit makes the 2/3rds of our base load (most probably a common pattern in everyone’s base load). Occasionally we get some random peaks when the fridge/freezer compressor  is working… not all time but when it kicks in to maintain the cool temperature. You turn off stuff it must reflect in hourly/daily consumption unless it is somewhere ‘a phantom load’ in your wires. … ;) 

Good luck with loading hunting … Another way to do it is to trip all MCBs from your consumer unit and start to put ON one by one. 30mins. sampling it may take a bit of time to catch some crazy consumption but with Raspberry Pi and LDR sensor or any real-time IHD you can simply watch the display and check any jumps in kW once you switch in MCBs from the consumer unit. Do not do anything which may put at risk your life obviously while operating close to consumer unit. Safety is a first. If unsure just get an IHD from your supplier or one of these one you can connect to your Smart Meters and with patience you can do it.