Made some good robot butler progress, my lightwaverf api now handles dimming, querying the energy meter, and sequences of commands, it’s coming along nicely. I got Harry interested in typing stuff on the keyboard to make the lights go on and off, he has been the only person to show any interest so far though.
I’ve got a nodejs script running on the raspberry pi now too that constantly polls the lightwaverf energy meter and that’s generating the graph on pi.clarkeology.com. Not sure what those regular spikes were between 6pm and 8pm, maybe that’s the oven? I am positive it is not anything I am doing with the new devices or the computer though! Not entirely sure I have it all set up right anyway, or what numbers I should be seeing. I know lower numbers is better, so I’m constantly turning things off right now.
I found this blog post that got me going with the energy monitor, before that I’d just been firing off requests to the wifi link and discarding the results, but now of course I need to return the response. So I’m using some nodejs and some ruby for my main stuff right now, trying hard not to just fall back to php for everything.
I’ve found this forum too which seems to be a collection of slightly lost souls and an excuse to post a lot of affiliate links - a man after my own heart! I hope to get some info there, but I am worried it will give me more things to worry about rather than the info I want. Lots of people seem disillusioned with the lightwaverf products, mostly because of promised new products not turning up. I’m happy with the products that are there right now though, there’s still plenty of fun to be had just with what’s on the shelves at B&Q right now… If the company goes bust I’ll have to go on a mad hunt for stock so as to finish the house, but it’s not like I’m relying on support or anything.
One odd thing I have spotted on the official lightwaverf site is their talk of a lightwaverf concierge service for the energy monitor, where you pay a subscription for logging of your energy meter data… I guess that’s aimed at people who can’t just do it themselves like I have. It was a tiny bit fiddly I suppose, but easy enough for someone techie. It would be lovely to think that this technology too off and there were loads of people willing to pay for services like this. Hey if you’re out there with money to burn and need some help with this, give me a shout!
Not sure what’s next, probably just more sockets and lights to start with. I did the lounge today with the new kit I got for christmas, so next stop is the hallways, then I might take a crack at the heating. There are some promised products specifically for heating but I’ve seen this person (who is also making their own api) has rolled their own heating controls - sounds quite simple really when you think about it. I need to work a calendar in to it somewhere though, bit too spacky having the heating and water timed by cron jobs…
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Paul Clarke's blog - I live and work in Hythe near Folkestone, Kent. Married to Clare and father to two, I am a full stack web engineer, and I do mostly javascript / nodejs, some ruby, python, php etc. I like pubs, restaurants, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, TV, squirrels, pirates , lego, and time travel.