I have also looked at NorthQ as they do a nice gas monitor (similar to Loop and Smappee) but then I wondered why I was thinking about spending £00s to save a few pence. I went for the cheaper solution of a TPLink that I just move around the house. It has encouraged me to reduce my overnight background consumption by turning things off.
If you're trying to use it as an automation trigger then yes, that's important. But if you're just trying to understand why the electricity bill is so high those minimal loads really aren't that important.Originally Posted by dty
Smappee actually lumps all of the little PSUs etc. together into a single 'always on' load, but it does provide help to try to reduce that.
P.
At 6,500kWh/yr, our electricity usage is higher than average, but I can understand why and accept that.
At 65,000kWh/yr, it's our gas usage that I really need to be focusing on! :O
That does seem excessive!
16,800 kWh/year on gas here. 1950s 4 bed detached, plus big extension.
65MWh is mind boggling. Do you smelt metals or something? ;-)
I bought a replacement Loop gas monitor last week (from B&Q) and I contacted a nice helpful lady through Loop's help desk to get the new device MAC registered. It all seemed to be in business.
I think it's safe to say smappee is pretty mature. But if you're going to make decisions based on device status then smappee isn't the way to do it, in fact whole house monitoring isn't the way at all, you need to work at the device level. A simple network (Zwave, zigbee, Wifi) enabled plug with decent power monitoring should be all you need.
Smappee's V2 device monitoring is MUCH better than the original (you can toggle between the two). It's clever how it goes beyond pure wattage, looking at things like power factor and duty cycle too.
But as you say, it'll never be 100%.
P.
Is the EBay offer for v1 or v2? Smappee’s website shows a retail price of £199.
It's a firmware update.
P.
It seems that the Loop electricity monitor is not available anywhere but the gas one is. The gas one is no good without the other. I did have Loop but was not impressed, the gas sensor seemed to give dubious readings from time to time and often I was loosing connection to the main site. I gave up on it.
Smappee looks interesting. It seems in my case I would need to add a power socket alongside my consumer unit in my hall and wire the Smappee unit sensor into the consumer unit, if there is room inside. My meter is outside and there is no way of providing power to the Smappee unit there.
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