Measuring real time gas consumption

[DJBenson]

Every now and then I mention that I reckon they've gone bust but paid for a 1 year or 3 year AWS rental up front, and nobody thought to turn it off...

But then I had cause to contact them about a month back and they were pretty responsive.

It does feel a lot like a business that's in trouble or at least has lost its way.

I'm considering swapping to Smappee. I like that their electricity monitor can measure power factor correctly. Plus they have a public API (and NodeRED components) which Loop doesn't have.

They look good apart from the fact that it's almost £400 for a setup equivalent to the loop kit (which cost £79).

[paulockenden]

Smappee is great, but you can’t rely on the appliance detection for automation tasks.

[HenGus]

They look good apart from the fact that it's almost £400 for a setup equivalent to the loop kit (which cost £79).

Finding a Loop Energy Gas kit might be difficult. B and Q have been out of stock for months. The Smappee Gas monitor doesn't need the electricity kit to work as it has a BlueTooth option that will load information up to the cloud via a mobile device. I was able to pick up a NorthQ Gas Starter Kit off Ebay for a fraction of its list price: there are no ongoing monitoring costs.

[alanharvey]

@DJBenson

Thanks for the help!
I think you may have found the first problem already.
I do indeed get an error 'No module named pyloopenergy' when I try to import from the python prompt.

As I said I am a complete novice at this so I apologise for the stupid mistakes and naivety.

Detail:-
To get the code I cloned the Github folders while logged in to the Rpi as 'pi' and in the home directory. This created a subdirectory under the home directory called 'pyloopenergy' with a sub-sub-directory also called 'pyloopenergy' which contains the files.
If I'm in the home directory and type 'import loopenergy' I get the 'No module...' error.
If I cd to the 'loopenergy' sub-directory and type 'import loopenergy' it starts to import but I now get 'ImportError: No module named socketIO_client' when the process runs loop_energy.py line 15.

So how to fix the problems found to date?

Is it OK to carry on with this on here or would private message be better?

Thanks again.

[alanharvey]

I was fortunate in that I was given my LoopEnergy electrical kit under a project set up by BMG research to monitor electricity consumption in my area. This must be a couple of years ago now. So the kit is theirs and they have control over the account. I have access to read it. I bought the add-on gas kit.

In the last couple of months I have noticed the Loop logo has disappeared and a new logo appearing top left of the iPhone App window '4 TO 8'. Googling that doesn't return anything useful.

BMG is running this project in collaboration with University of Southampton, DNV GL and Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution and it is being funded through Ofgem’s Low Carbon Network Fund.
According to their website the BMG project will run till 'early 2019'.

It could well be that this research project is the reason the LoopEnergy servers are still running...

[Jackthom]

@DJBenson

Thanks for the help!
I think you may have found the first problem already.
I do indeed get an error 'No module named pyloopenergy' when I try to import from the python prompt.

As I said I am a complete novice at this so I apologise for the stupid mistakes and naivety.

Detail:-
To get the code I cloned the Github folders while logged in to the Rpi as 'pi' and in the home directory. This created a subdirectory under the home directory called 'pyloopenergy' with a sub-sub-directory also called 'pyloopenergy' which contains the files.
If I'm in the home directory and type 'import loopenergy' I get the 'No module...' error.
If I cd to the 'loopenergy' sub-directory and type 'import loopenergy' it starts to import but I now get 'ImportError: No module named socketIO_client' when the process runs loop_energy.py line 15.

So how to fix the problems found to date?

Is it OK to carry on with this on here or would private message be better?

Thanks again.

There's a script called setup.py in the package which will most likely be the correct way to install the module.
When in the correct directory you may have to use

sudo python setup.py

to get it to install.

[alanharvey]

Thanks, done that. I’m getting somewhere now. I can get it to run (sort of) in a shell window, but not yet in IDLE, after installing socketIO_client and cd’ing to the loopenergy directory. It must be a path issue. It’s not connected to Domiticz yet though. I created the dummy sensors using the guide but don’t know how to make the connection.

My objective is to get this working and produce a clean RPI SD card image that will auto-boot a pi and sit there logging, producing a data table that I can import over the LAN into Excel (my comfort zone) to a PC.

Crawling up the learning curve.

[DBMandrake]

In the last couple of months I have noticed the Loop logo has disappeared and a new logo appearing top left of the iPhone App window '4 TO 8'. Googling that doesn't return anything useful.

In the loop iPhone app ?

That's strange, nothing has changed with the logo for me and loop is still working the same as the day I bought it.

If I hadn't seen gossip about Loop on here I wouldn't even know there was a problem with supply of new units.

[HenGus]

In the loop iPhone app ?

That's strange, nothing has changed with the logo for me and loop is still working the same as the day I bought it.

If I hadn't seen gossip about Loop on here I wouldn't even know there was a problem with supply of new units.

It’s been like this for months:

https://www.loopenergysaver.com/prod...-fuel/lifetime

B and Q and Amazon appear to have stock of the electricity monitor but no gas.

I think that the parent company may have gone into liquidation:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/c...filing-history

[alanharvey]

Here is an iPhone screen dump (I hope). E1D5A8E2-173B-4130-A828-0FC4AC4C427E.jpg