Configuring EGauge Sensor

WattDepot: A system for collecting and storing data from electricity meters for smart grid research and experimentation.

Instructions on how to configure the eGauge sensor

Introduction

This document explains how to configure the WattDepot eGauge sensor.

Requirements

Many users will want to run the sensor on the same computer that the WattDepot server runs on, so you should have completed either Installing WattDepot Server On Heroku or Installing WattDepot Server Locally.

Writing Configuration File

The eGauge sensor is configured via a properties file. By default, the sensor will look for this properties file in ~/.wattdepot/client/datainput.properties

Here is an example properties file:

## Server properties
datainput.wattdepot-server.uri=http://localhost:8182/wattdepot/
[email protected]
datainput.wattdepot-server.password=CHANGEME

## Meters
datainput.source.MyMeter1.name=MyMeter1
datainput.source.MyMeter1.updateRate=10
datainput.source.MyMeter1.meterHostname=example.egaug.es
datainput.source.MyMeter1.meterType=EGAUGE
datainput.source.MyMeter1.registerName=Student Usage V

The first three properties specify how to communicate with the WattDepot server. The URI depends on the port number that the WattDepot server was configured for. The username and password should match a user that was created on the server during the installation (it is not recommended to use the admin user here, since that has more privileges than are needed).

Each meter will have 5 lines of configuration. Each meter's name is used as part a key in the property, so that the eGauge sensor knows which properties belong to which meter. In this example, the meter is called "MyMeter1", and all the properties start with datainput.source.MyMeter1.

The name property is the Source to which SensorData should be sent to. This must exactly match the name of a Source created when the server was installed. For consistency, it is recommended that the meter key and name match.

The updateRate property is the number of seconds between polls of the meter. In this example, we are polling the meter every 10 seconds.

The meterHostname property is the domain name or IP address of the meter. Depending on your local network configuration, this could be the actual IP address or hostname of the meter, or (if you have chosen to use eGauge's public proxy connection) it could be a hostname in the egaug.es domain.

meterType must always be EGAUGE for eGauge meters.

registerName is the name of the register on the eGauge meter that contains the energy and power data you would like to record in WattDepot. The eGauge has a very flexible configuration system for registers, so it is best to use that system to determine what values you want to record, and just configure the register name here.

For additional meters, just create additional blocks of meter config, each with their own meter key and parameters.

Running the sensor

Change to the top level of the wattdepot distribution you downloaded. The available command line arguments can be displayed via the --help flag:

java -cp wattdepot-<version>-jar-with-dependencies.jar org.wattdepot.sensor.egauge.EGaugeSensor --help
usage: eGaugeSensor
 -d,--debug                    Displays sensor data as it is sent to the
                               server.
 -h,--help                     Print this message
 -p,--propertyFilename <arg>   Filename of property file

You can now run the sensor and make sure the properties file is set up properly.

java -cp wattdepot-<version>-jar-with-dependencies.jar org.wattdepot.sensor.egauge.EGaugeSensor

Running the sensor in production

Once you are done configuring the sensor and testing that it is working properly, you will probably want to make sure it runs every time your server boots. This can be done in the same way described in the server installation page.