HVAC Usage Monitoring

[Sinandgrin]

I recently moved into a new home and was getting ready to install my Insteon thermostats. The existing thermostats in the home, which are fairly nice units, have an energy monitoring feature that allows you to view (in time) how long the system ran for based on today, yesterday, this week, last week, and in total since manually reset. I've been finding this feature very helpful as I acclimate myself to the new home and the temperature setpoints that I will be using. I would like to re-create these energy usage statistics using HS3 and this plugin. Does anybody know of an easy way to do this? Is there any way to tie into the built-in HS3 energy feature? Ultimately I would like to have these values presented on my HSTouch screens as well.
The only way that I can think of solving this is with a bunch of events and scripting. It seems like I would need events that trigger when a new day starts, when a new week starts and some manually refreshed event to allow for the total usage being reset if desired. Then I suppose I could tie into Counters and use events that update the Counters values when the Plug-in reports that the HVAC units started or stopped running. Can anyone think of an easier way to set this all up or offer some tips in how to do this with scripts/events?

[ewkearns]

I am doing this with events, but with 4 zones, it certainly is labor intensive. I log high/low temps, heating time, cooling time, and total times. It works, but IMHO it is messy.

Scripting would be a lot more straight forward, but there is virtually no documentation for anything other than vb.net "Hello World" and form filling.

[bdraper]

I am using HomeSeer timers and counters to monitor my HVAC system. We are monitoring start cycle (counter) for the current day, filter runtime and lifetime. I am also monitoring the runtime (timer) for the current day, filter runtime and lifetime. I also graph this data with Jon00's graphing utility. It works very well.

I originally thought that doing this through the event engine would be difficult, but once I got used to it, it actually worked out very well.
I have more events setup based on the data that is collected, such as emails are sent when the filter has X number of hours on it, letting us know it is time for a replacement or cleaning.

I am using Jon00s Database Charting Utility, see http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=171875. It is a great utility for capturing data and graphing the results.

Attached is a graph of my HVAC systems runtime and on/off cycles. We have two units and I wanted a graph with both HVAC units, including runtime and cycles. This graph gives me a lot of information in one place. I have this graph on a webpage (Jon00 Quickview web page) next to a 14 day graph of temperature and humidity. Building the events were fairly straightforward, but then I work in IT so my mind works a little different.

Using the events to set this up, I also setup filter change rotation counters. HomeSeer will email us after a certain amount of time for general maintenance. I have reset buttons setup in a Quickview webpage and in HSTouch project that allow me to run an event to reset the counters after I change or clean them.

If you need any information on the events, let me know and I will post some additional screen shots.

See this post for more details: http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=172778

Also see this post for more info: http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=169671

HVAC Runtime Information


Counters


Timers


Below are a few of the events that monitor and maintain the system. I have them split between the upstairs and downstairs unit. There is also a event (not pictured) that inserts the data into the database and builds the graph. Let me know if you need a screen shot of that one. There are also a number of events that send emails upon needed maintenance, such as cleanings and filter replacements, these are sent based on unit runtime and not calendar days.

Event - Start Midnight


Event - Start Normal


Event - Stop and Reset


Let me know if you would like additional information or screen shots.

I hope this helps

[Sinandgrin]

Thanks for the input guys and thanks Billy, this is almost exactly what I am looking to to do. I am sure I will have some questions for you but I'll need to dig into this a bit first. I'll need to look at the database/graphing utility.

[bdraper]

Thanks for the input guys and thanks Billy, this is almost exactly what I am looking to to do. I am sure I will have some questions for you but I'll need to dig into this a bit first. I'll need to look at the database/graphing utility.

No problem, glad to help. Let me know if you have any questions. It is easy to get a little overwhelmed with Jon's Database Graphing Utility, however, the manual is very comprehensive and a must read. If you spend some time with it, you will discover as have many others, the extreme usefulness of this plug-in. I have been running it since it came out and it is incredible.

[langenet]

Billy - looking at this technique for tracking my HVAC and wondering if you mind sharing your event that inserts the data into the database and builds the graph.

I haven't even looked at Jon's graphing package yet, but have been impressed by what I seen here.

Thanks,

Robert

[bdraper]

Billy - looking at this technique for tracking my HVAC and wondering if you mind sharing your event that inserts the data into the database and builds the graph.

I haven't even looked at Jon's graphing package yet, but have been impressed by what I seen here.

Thanks,

Robert

Sure, no problem, it is really quite simple using Jon's plugin once you have it setup. I can also share the configuration files for the database table, and graphs once you get started or if you would like to see them.

This is the event to insert the data into the table and create the chart.


Let me know if you have any questions.

[Sinandgrin]

Hey Billy I have a question for you. Do you have to create a separate database table for each graphing page if you want to see a certain resolution along the Y-axis? For example if I was recording data to a table every five minutes but wanted to see that data presented for a period equal to a week, could I use that table where I had data points from every five minutes but somehow change the display resolution to only show an average of those data points for each day of that week. So instead of having 2016 columns or points of data along my y-axis I would have 7 points of data along my y-axis. Or do I need to record the data points to a completely separate table and do so only once a day so that the graph that I create from that second table would match the y-axis resolution that I'm looking for. Hope that makes sense.

Also how do you setup HSTouch to pull in the Chart image?