Hi,
I have a question regarding ihost. Is it possible to connect a device using modbus rs485? At home I have several meters of this type for the general + photovoltaic meter. The real problem is that sonoff meters are limited to 20A max and I would need more.
Thanks, have a good day,
You can connect many things to MQTT via an EBUS Adapter. They tend to be heat exchangers and boilers, rather than electric though and the most common brands I have noticed are German. I think because the people behind the EBUSD daemon are German.
If you are in U.K. and have a smart meter you can also connect the total electricity (and gas) usage to MQTT (via a Hildebrand Glow device). Probably similar elsewhere but U.K. is what I know.
Both iHost and NSPP can connect to an MQTT broker using Node Red. iHost can also run an MQTT broker. Suspect NSPP can too in developer mode.
I have seen (from other brands) contactless current measuring Zigbee devices that clamp around cables. I got close to getting some but they don’t do DC and I thought they’d be good for measuring battery outputs. My normal process with Zigbee devices is to see if they work on iHost and if not use Zigbee2MQTT but I never actually tried these.
I think I’d just look into connecting your modbus via an adapter that can do MQTT. You can install an MQTT broker on the iHost and read MQTT data in Node Red on the iHost.
It is definitely possible, but no straight forward.
I would use a RS485-Ethernet gateway because you cannot connect serial lines to the iHost. There are a lot of models like these on the market, I used these blue modules from EByte before: Ethernet IO Wholesalers, Factory
It has an ethernet connection and also RS485. You can connect your RS485 devices to it, and read them over the ethernet.
There is pretty good modbus node in Node-Red that can read modbus.
Also in Node-Red you can create virtual devices and update their value from the data you get out of modbus. This all sounds a bit complicated but very much doable.
Just to add to my comments: as far as I can tell eWeLink did not add energy meter into capabilities yet. It cannot handle energy as a unit just yet. You can be a bit creative and for example a temperature sensor to display the energy value (like watts), or just keep the value in Node-Red and use a Node-Red dashboard to display it. It all depends on what you want to do with the information.
Thank you for your answers, I’m really new to Node Red and I don’t have much knowledge of javascript. For the moment I can only do some automation with a switch. This seems complicated at first glance but I’ll try to dig into the question. Do you know if there is a zigbee or wifi meter compatible with ihost up to 12kVA? The goal is to have the kWh and Watts live. (For your information, I am not in the United Kingdom but in France)
I used this device from Zemismart:
And now they have a 3 phase unit as well. But I did not tested it with iHost, so I am not sure if this works. I have not seen any energy meter device work with iHost up until now.