Water & Gas Monitoring Test: Flukso Gas and Water meter sensors + emonPi / emonTx or emonTH?

Has anyone tested the Flukso gas probe or water probe with the emonPi or emonTx? https://www.flukso.net/content/gas-probe and https://www.flukso.net/content/water-probe

Sensors should work in place of the optical pulse sensor on the interrupt port. A pull-up or pull down resistor may be required. Internal pull-up resistors are currently enabled on both emonPi  / emonTx and emonTH. 

If anyone has an Elster BK-G4/BK-G6 or Actaris G4RF1 gas meter I would be happy to send you a Flukso gas probe free of charge to test  with.  

Same goes if if anyone has a  Kent V100 'grenade'-type water meter I'm happy to send out a free water probe if you would test. 

 

Beire's picture

Re: Water & Gas Monitoring Test: Flukso Gas and Water meter sensors + emonPi / emonTx or emonTH?

Well.. As part of our project to apply OEM emonpi setups throughout our heatpump customer base we als were planning to add a gas boiler installation.
In one of the install's we wiuld be installing an Elster meter compatibele with that exact probe.

So yes, we will be trying these sensors.
Flukso is belgian based also i thought, so i think easy to source over here.
They are rather cheap also.

I'll let you know if we got to installing them.

Since you deel to have them, you have no compatibele meters to test on?
First priority is getting the flow reading added so wr van expand to the other installs.

albrecht's picture

Re: Water & Gas Monitoring Test: Flukso Gas and Water meter sensors + emonPi / emonTx or emonTH?

Since one year I'm using the emonTx v2 with a current clamp to monitor my power usage. In addition I've tried to read my gas meter (which is an Elster BK-G4) with a simple reed switch soldered to veroboard. In general it works but its extremely delicate to find the right position. However the power metering works extremely well. I've slightly changed the setup and used an ESP8266 to transmit the data via WIFI. It is collected by a server running Linux with collectd and stored in an rrd database. It is then visualized on an internal home-built web page.

Since the simple reed switch approach is not robust enough I'd like to use a commercial gas meter probe. So if your offer is still valid I'd like to give it a try. Feel free to contact me.

During this project I've learned quite a lot. Thanks for this.

glyn.hudson's picture

Re: Water & Gas Monitoring Test: Flukso Gas and Water meter sensors + emonPi / emonTx or emonTH?

Can anyone confirm successful use of Fluxo gas and or water meter probes with the emonTx V3?

https://www.flukso.net/shop

Happy to send out a sensor free of charge to anyone with a Elster BK-G4/BK-G6 or Actaris G4RF1 gas meter or Kent V100 'grenade'-type water meter for testing. 

JohanM's picture

Re: Water & Gas Monitoring Test: Flukso Gas and Water meter sensors + emonPi / emonTx or emonTH?

I have the flukso gas and water probes connected to the emonbase gpio. In the beginning I had quite some spurious pulses, but after adding an external 10K ohm pull-up and tweaking the python code a bit it's been running pretty stable now for a couple of weeks.

The gas meter is an Actaris G4RF1, the water meter is from Kiwa.

toby.cambray's picture

Re: Water & Gas Monitoring Test: Flukso Gas and Water meter sensors + emonPi / emonTx or emonTH?

In my area there seems to be a lot of gas meters with a silvered "0" on the first tumbler, so we've been developing a reflectance sensor based solution. I have a few of these I've been using :

https://www.pololu.com/product/2459

We've designed and 3D printed some cases too. My plan is to use an emonth as a node as Gas meters are usually somewhat remote from where an emonpi would be located - often outside especially for newer buildings. Once we've nailed that, I'm want to do a similar thing with a Hall effect sensor which should be able to get better results than a reedswitch.

I was hoping that with these two options, as well as possibly being cheaper than the Flukso, would offer more flexibility - I've not got up close and personal with the Flukso but sounds like it might only be compatible with a few meters? If we have an opensourced option, savvy users can more easily tweak to suit the various meters they come across.

I was a bit concerned about battery life. Is there any feedback on battery life on the emonth with the grey electrical pulse counter? One idea I had to extend or even completely avoid battery changes was to add a small PV cell but I've ot developed that at all yet!

I'd be interested in getting a Flukso unit To mess around with if you still have one Glynn? I have access to an Actaris G4 meter, its not the RF1 model but might be worth a go.

toby.cambray's picture

Re: Water & Gas Monitoring Test: Flukso Gas and Water meter sensors + emonPi / emonTx or emonTH?

I saw on another Thread Glyn had measured the idle current at "close too zero" which is good - any more detail on how close to zero you got Glyn? Have you done any long term testing?

I just measured the idle current of the Pololu sensor at 10mA - just roughly using a 100 ohm resistor in series with the unit. This would cane a couple of AA fairly quick, ten or twenty days before you account for the microcontroller. We're looking into PWM control over the LED to see how dim we can run it and still get a reliable reading, and also developing a bit of code that pulses the power to the LED - obviously the frequency and pulse width need to be carefully chosen to avoid missing a pulse.

There's another version of the sensor that is intended for connection to analog inputs which might work better for this application.

Will try and document the process in a bit more detail. All thoughts appreciated!

glyn.hudson's picture

Re: Water & Gas Monitoring Test: Flukso Gas and Water meter sensors + emonPi / emonTx or emonTH?

I'm afraid I don't have any of the sensor left. The current was zero since the sensor is a reed switch activated by a magnetic ring on the gas meter. It's a shame more meters don't support this. Sadly gas metering is hard due to the variability of meter. Please keep me updated with your progress. A lot of properties where we live Norht Wales are without mains gas which makes testing gas metering difficult. 

gapintheclouds's picture

Re: Water & Gas Monitoring Test: Flukso Gas and Water meter sensors + emonPi / emonTx or emonTH?

Has anyone had any success with a Flukso sensor? I have an Actaris U6 meter and was considering buying one, but they're charging 18€ P&P to the UK!

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