OVO SMETS2 smart meter In Home Displays (IHD) - Guide

Bad news @Tim_OVO ! This already monster sized tutorial topic is about to grow even larger! 

It’s worth bearing in mind that not all Wi-Fi Routers support WPS anymore. While a lot of older ones do support WPS, certain newer ones dropped support for WPS partially for security reasons, but also because it wasn’t always particularly reliable or well used. The Scan method will work fine however in all cases! But if you’re having trouble getting your shiny new IHD6 onto your Wi-Fi, I’d like to add a few tips to the guide.

Just as a heads up, I use a pretty overpowered setup which I blogged about a while ago. Some of the features it has might not be present on your router, but this won’t be a problem. You may need to login to your router for some of these solutions.

My IHD can’t find my Wi-Fi Network at all, even though it’s close to the router!

There’s a couple of things that might help here, assuming you’re definitely in range.

Is your Wi-Fi Router/Network actually turned on?

It’s surprising how easy it is for this to happen! If you’ve accidentally turned off the Wi-Fi in your settings, please make sure it’s turned back on.

Did you hide the SSID/Network Name?

If you’ve hidden the network, this makes using your devices more tricky. I generally recommend setting this to show the SSID/Network Name as it doesn’t do anything useful:

Is your 2.4GHz Wi-Fi turned on?

Most IHDs like the Chameleon IHD3 and IHD6 only support 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band, rather than the newer 5GHz Wi-Fi band. You can run both at once under the same network name/password though and this should fix the issue.

Why does my IHD6 fail to connect to my Wi-Fi Network?

Most likely it’s one of the issues above. The other two likely ones are that you’re trying to connect to the wrong network, or you’re entering the wrong password! Make sure to double check you’re using the right ones. 

If you’re using MAC Address Filtering, you’ll also either need to add your IHD to the list of permitted devices or turn MAC Address Filtering off completely. Also…

Can your Wi-Fi Router see your IHD? Has it ever seen your IHD connect?

Most Wi-Fi Routers should tell you whether your IHD is currently connected. If you don’t see it in the list of connected devices, you might want to check things over again.

And that should solve most IHD Wi-Fi issues. 

Hi there @nmac234 ,

This isn’t quite the right thread for your question, but I’ll answer it for you while it’s here and ask a moderator to move things over later.

I’m afraid there’s no specific option to view night time usage on an IHD6 that I know of. The closest it can do is current usage as of right now, or for the current day so far. If you’re looking for a specific hour, you might want to check your account in MyOVO.

Hi I have the same issue with IHD that others have described in this thread and others. What do I do now?

Here’s the history

• SMETS2 and Chameleon IHD6 installed 06/01/21; no connection issues and all works fine (except IHD battery seems to last only half a day from full charge; I’ve reported that).
• Yesterday (02/02/21) the IHD stopped showing any usage information and Meter Information Screen shows “Waiting for Meter Reading” – both for gas and electricity.
• IHD shows strong HAN signal. I’ve done the IHD hard switch off and restart several times to no effect.
• Communication hub has both WAN and HAN green lights blinking at 5 sec intervals (which I think is ok).
• Usage is registering on my online account – or at least it was. See these screen clips taken from my PC just now (the phone app shows exactly the same). Note that electricity figure is missing yesterday.

Is there any more to check before I contact Ovo? And I’m not sure from the thread I’ve quoted that the issues are being fixed.

Thanks @Ed_OVO as if my magic, the IHD is now connected again, with a message “gas meter initialised” and all displays seem to be working, incuding usage for both fuels

The usage data on my account is still stuck at 1 February for electricity, but has moved forward to 3 Feb (yesterday) for gas. I assume that the account info in the app will catch up eventually...

Hi @Blastoise186 things have gone backwards!

There were no electricty readings visible on my account after 1 February, though gas was updated ok. And then the new IHD arrived - appeared to connect after making a call to Ovo, though I was on forf 25 minutes. But IHD shows no readings even after 24 hours - and now there are no usage updates at all on my account. I’m getting in touch again of course (need to check meter indicators again) and will update here.

I’m not really happy - time spent reading old meter and sending readings - 5 minutes each month. Time spent on issues with IHD and Samrt Meter in one month 2 hours and counting...

Yes fine.

I’m happy to help others too although I don’t often have much time to browse

@hecate when you next log in, have a look at the category menu (top left). You should now see a new area called Tech Treehouse with a padlock.

Mod bless,

Tim

Thanks for the heads up @hecate . It should be fairly easy to restore the submission settings back to whatever you’d like them to be on for both meters. The Support Team can take care of that on request, but it can take a few days to apply the changes.

We’ll catch up with you in the Tech Treehouse when you’re ready. :)

Hi my chameleon meter has a continual flashing connectivity signal and keeps resetting itself every minute or so. Is there a fix for this please ?

Thanks,  I’ll give them a go 

Hi @Rick1331 - sorry to hear you’re having some issues with your IHD, good news is you’ve found the right place to try and figure this one out!

I’ve moved your post over to our Chameleon IHD guide as there’s some great trouble-shooting advice here which could help.

As @Blastoise186 mentioned, a resetting device could indicate a communication issue. It’s worth making sure the IHD is plugged in close to the electricity meter and there’s nothing that could be obstructing the signal. If this doesn’t get things sorted reach out to our Support Team for a full investigation into the issue. 

Don’t forget to pop back and let us know how things go - and in the meantime remember you can always check your usage info on your online account or OVO app (download for Android or iOS).

Hope this helps!   

Yay! That’s great news. Thanks for letting us know @Rick1331 .

If you have trouble again, feel free to stop by and I can try to run through some quick troubleshooting steps just in case they fix issues without needing the Support Team to step in. And I’m always happy to make use of the Kecleon Brothers if needed too. :)

Hi there @sue4571 .

Uh oh, that doesn’t sound right at all. I can try to advise on this as the Support Team aren’t around on Sundays. They’ll be back in the morning though and you can contact them using the details over here for Live Chat or you can phone 0330 303 5063. Just in case you’re not aware, it sounds like you might also be eligible for the Priority Services Register as well. You can apply for that either via OVO’s website, by live chat or by phone and it’s a free service.

I’m only a forum volunteer myself so I can’t make any changes to your account or access your account directly. But I think I know what might be happening here.

It sounds possible that your meters could be a bit faulty for some reason, especially if you know you’ve not actually been using more than normal. It’s possible to try to diagnose this with a Creep Test for your electricity meter and a Burns Test for your gas meter. I’ve put a link below which can explain what to do.

If you’re unsure though, feel free to let me know and I can walk you through these tests step by step. Please make sure to shut everything down safely before you do any tests though - especially sensitive electronics like your computer.

If you could also post some photos of your meters and In-Home Display in your next reply, that would also be really helpful.

Thanks!