TimescaleDB
Why not Influx I've been using Influx (v1 and v2). Flux is great but now (2025) unsupported. Influx has bugs with won't be fixed. The worst is duplicate points which means you can't rely on …
ARTICLES
Energy Monitoring
Electricity Cables: size matters
Ever see a big power cable and wonder the maximum current it can carry? No? Oh well, here it is just in case. Estimates only. Based on cable data, open spacing, 50m, 3% VD. Area …
CTs for IotaWatt 8266
CT Orientation Echun (ECS) and Accu CTs can be used with the IotaWatt. To align with current flow: Echun leads point to the grid Accu leads point to the load Big CTs - configuration in …
Grafana Multi-Tenant
Teams, Folders, Organisations ... and Provisioning. What's up with that? I use Grafana to display data about IoT devices (PhiSaver). It's all stored in a single DB. This Db cannot have access controls, so access …
Complex Electricity Metering
How to get meaningful energy efficiency results when there is a spaghetti of boards A more complex schematic - what should we meter? Look at that mess! We focus on the result , not just …
Energy Dashboards
Currently (2021) PhiSaver has one billlion data points. It's a bit hard to display in a single user dashboard. An efficient user dashboard should answer questions. This page charts my progress to the mythical perfect …
Energy Monitoring: Circuit Positives and Negatives!
Control Volume Switchboard Switchboard as control volume This is how I use a control-volume approach to practically monitor circuits. It's half maths and half "it's easy that way". The area below is a switchboard, monitored …
Enclosures for electronics and RF
Investigations into using ABS, polycarbonate and sheet metal enclosures to house electronics with a focus on getting that radio signal (wifi, 3G/4G) out of the box Requirements Weatherproof. IP66 = no dust and no water …
Solar PV, Batteries and ... Maths
See updated version at https://brettbeeson.com.au/energy-monitoring-circuit-positives-and-negatives/ Some, it all seems pretty simple, right? It's just import, export, consumption. This post clarifies the sign (+ or -) conventions I use which seem to make thi…
Hacking an IotaWatt ESP8266
I need to flash the IotaWatt firmware (and write new files to the SD card) for two reasons: firstly I have a bricked IotaWatt, and secondly I want to try to modify the firmware to …
Access Grafana without a login screen
Unlike Grafana 5, we can't use the ' old' method of a proxy login to get a cookie for semi-permanent login. This post investigates options to achieve the goal of: Provide a user a "secret" …