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You are correct, the current prices mean solar diversion is rarely worth it for a residential connection now.

There could be so many things causing the problem that it's impossible for me to say what the specific issue is in your situation sorry. You'll have to go through logs for the add-on, and also confirm you have a public IP address not a private one on your router, confirm that port forwarding is working, test it from a different internet connection, etc. Piece by piece troubleshooting ruling out one component at a time.

If you swap to this on-peak/off-peak method you have effectively lost your old data from the energy dashboard. The workaround is to make sure that you don't delete your old energy sensor and keep it added to the energy dashboard but make sure it never gets populated with new data. That way it'll always be there never changing, but the new tariff-based sensors should have different names and pick up from where the old sensor left off.

@SpeakToTheGeekTech Thanks for the response, so from what you are saying, I am too late, I can't just add the original sensor back in?

If your original sensor still exists and has data, then you can add it back to the energy dashboard and its data will appear again. If it's still populating with new data in that sensor though, you'll get double-accounting

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech The old sensor is the one I have used at your stage of your video 4:22 'Utility meter' setting where you show the red text. I removed it from the Energy dashboard and just added the new peak and off-peak sensors. You previously said "The workaround is to make sure that you don't delete your old energy sensor and keep it added to the energy dashboard but make sure it never gets populated with new data" I am not sure how I would stop it getting populated with new data, and don't I still need it populating because it is effectively the source of usage for the new peak/off-peak sensors? Sorry if my questions seem a bit dumb!

Yes, that is covered in this video by using a door sensor within the template garage door cover entity

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech Thank you for the quick reply! I must be missing something because i followed step by step but when i expose it to alexa, if its already closed i can just say "alexa, close the garage door" and it will open. bypassing the 4 digit voice command security code. Would it be different because im using a zen16 and tilt sensor and not an esp32?

I got it figured out, you need an if-then statement to check state, like this- open_cover: action: switch.turn_on target: entity_id: >- {% if not is_state('binary_sensor.garage_door_open_close_sensor', 'on') %} switch.garage_door_zooz {% else %} none {% endif %} close_cover: action: switch.turn_on target: entity_id: >- {% if is_state('binary_sensor.garage_door_open_close_sensor', 'on') %} switch.garage_door_zooz {% else %} none {% endif %} otherwise its a security issue using it in voice assistant or automations.

Nice, glad you're happy with it

No it's totally separate, and hotspot mode will turn itself off after a few minutes of not being used.

@SpeakToTheGeekTech That was incredibly fast! thank you for your reply! best regards

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech So sorry, but one more question. Are the settings, that are accessible by browser, password protected? I know that for SetApp on phone, you need a maintenance account.

Well, they can't hear it because it's not that loud and doesn't travel that far. I consulted with them before I installed it and have spoken with them since and they have no issues because they don't notice it at all. They used to hear my gas boiler though because the flue from that was high up and projected the noise and exhaust fumes over the fence. Also, it doesn't run 24/7, it kicks in and out as needed to maintain the home's temperature.

Just have a look at skill builder one size does not fit all yours is only a month old give it a few years that pump will drive you mad it’s to early to say it is a success if you have a 1930 built house it’s definitely not for a heat pump

​@@iansadler9316 Ha, you're wrong there, I've had this for a year now and working perfectly so far. I'm very much aware of Skill Builder's videos - his early precautionary fantastical videos which got a lot of views no longer reflect his views, he has been in many discussions with the Heat Geek team and his facts have been corrected. 1930s houses are perfectly fine with heat pumps too, see Glyn Hudson from Open Energy Monitor and his extremely efficient installation running in his stone Welsh cottage.

You've downloaded the file for KVM (qcow2) when you need to download the file for VirtualBox (.vdi) if that's the virtualisation software you are using.

@@fneulens www.home-assistant.io/installation/linux

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech I also tried to select the vdi but impossible to select it. I repeat my steps, in VMware fusion 1 create a custom virtual machine. 2 select Linux and other Linux kernel 5.x 64 bits 3. Selection uefi 4.use an existing virtual disk (choice of disk) my file selector opens and I see the files download) haos_ova-13.2.vdi but impossible to select it... am I making a bad choice beforehand?

@@fneulens You originally said you were using VirtualBox, the .vdi file I gave you a link to is for VirtualBox. Now you are saying you are using VMware Fusion? That is a different file, a .vmdk available from here. www.home-assistant.io/installation/windows/

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech Great and thank you very much for your responsiveness!

You would still be allowed to do a salary sacrifice for an EV if your trust is partnered with a provider - you would save 20%. However, quite often you will find that dealerships are offering equal or better deals directly through a private HP or PCP. The second hand EV market is also starting to take off, albeit slowly due to less supply, but I think in 4 years there will be a lot of choice especially with new budgets EVs (like MG4, Renault 5 and Dacia Spring) all moving on to their second owners as finance deals expire. But yes, cars in general are very expensive things and we need many more second hand £5k-£10k EVs available for people to buy.

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech NHS Leasing, on the phone, have told me even their cheapest car, after the sacrifice, would put me under minimum wage so it was not possible 😔

I understand :( I don't know what sort of range you require, but if you only tend to do short journeys and don't need anything fancy, the Dacia Spring starts from £128/month with 0% finance. These cars will be everywhere second hand in 3 years though for peanuts! offers.dacia.co.uk/cars/spring/personal-contract-purchase?offerId=366#cars I will probably get one then once the lease on my MG4 runs out. I will likely replace my Dacia Duster with a second hand larger EV, and probably get a small second hand Dacia Spring as our family's second car.

Yup, you're probably right! Get your tyres, brakes and suspension done at a local garage, everything else at the main dealer :( The MG4 doesn't even have a paper service book to be stamped, it's all digital in-car!

That's odd, were you getting electricity readings sent through before? Best contact Octopus support to look at it, I'm sure it's easy enough for them to fix.

I don’t plan on moving out. All the figures are in different videos and for the solar and batteries I will break even in 2027/2028 with current estimates. I publish updates on that every 6 months.

@ I think for the vast majority of your viewers the capital outlay would just be too much. I appreciate that this is more of a hobby for you so you will be prepared to spend that kind of money, but for most of us you are spending what we would spend on a car! My own solar system was installed 12 years ago and paid back the 7k investment in 5 years, since then the fit payments have paid our electric bill. Even then it took a lot of discussion with my wife before we put up the money. (I need to keep up to date with your vids, I haven’t watched any in a while. )

Well, I guess you are partially correct with my motivations - I do like gadgets and tech and these are amazing gadgets so I would be kidding myself if I didn't admit that is a big attraction for me. But, our original motivation was financial. During the lockdowns I saw the way the world was going and made a prediction that energy prices were about to rocket. I'd been wanting to get solar for a while and had been saving up, but decided to get the battery too and put the whole plan in to action just in time for the massive hike in energy costs. Don't forget your investment of £7k 12 years ago is probably about £10k-£12k now, so not much different. I don't get FIT, but combined with off-peak tariffs and export it works out very well.

@ I like the idea of off-peak tariffs and being able to store that energy for consumption later. However the logical thing to me seems that I should be able to use the 39Kwh battery on my Leaf to do that job. Why are we having to spend loads of money on a set-up like yours to achieve the goal? I believe the car storage technology exists, surely that makes sense? To come back to the main point I was making earlier, the capital outlay needed for your system is just way above the average earner’s means. If there was a bold roll-out of scheme where low interest finance could be used to set things up with an attractive pay back period I think storage would be me popular. In the meantime I will just have to continue driving my storage battery around until things change! 😄

For a lot of people it would make total sense to use the car's battery when available (V2G / V2H). The tech exists, but is VERY expensive at the moment - you essentially need a special charger that enables two way power and includes an inverter, much like a battery one. The tech is coming down in price, but it's not making much progress outside of very early adopters right now. And I totally agree, all of this tech is way outside of many people's means. That doesn't mean I shouldn't champion it myself though. The more people who can afford to adopt the tech should adopt the tech in my opinion and it will help everyone else in two main ways: firstly by reducing the cost of energy overall for everyone else (we are reducing the peak demand which is where energy is most costly for suppliers); secondly by helping commoditise the hardware, making it cheaper and opening it up to more people. It's not a perfect system, many more things can be done, but I'd rather do what I am able to do and at least say I had tried to contribute than not do anything at all and assume it's someone else's problem.

No it is around the live cable coming from the smart meter to the AIO so as it can monitor you grid import/export. It’s not essential to have this, you can do cloud integration with the AIO, but I would highly recommend having it separate as it gives you options.

Thanks for the reply- my setup simply isn't working with excess solar divert and octopus intelligent go integration. It's effectively a dumb charger. I was wondering if the extra meter would change things at all. Second option is to re-install my old zappi V2 which I replaced for the givenergy offering!

@@nickunderwood638 If your charger can't see the exported solar power going out to the grid, whether that's provided by the GivEnergy Gateway or a separate EM115 meter, then it can't possibly know that there's any power to divert. Your charger also has to have been configured in the correct installation mode for that to work too. Your issue is most likely down to an incorrect installation. The use of an EM115 connected to the charger and monitoring the grid would let you put the charger in 'CT Meter' mode. The other modes being 'Standalone' (never do that, it's totally manual) or 'Inverter Control' which is what you should have now. It's worth checking you are in 'Inverter Control' mode by looking at the 'Change EV Configuration' setting of your charger in the app.

Thanks for the reply. That's what I don't quite understand. I have a meter connected to the live cable coming to the AIO already. It knows the import / export values. Why then do I need a 3rd meter for the car charger connected to effectively the same place? The AIO shows the values correctly, it just doesn't control the charger correctly! It charges using grid when solar surplus is either above or below the 1.4kw. The charger is set to Inverter control and "don't discharge battery" - just seems to ignore settings most of the time! I also can't get it to charge with Octopus intelligent Go with a Tesla controlling the charge. The software/firmware seems very sketchy to me. Very unreliable. I know everyone's experience is different, but I feel like a beta tester!😂

If you just want to buy something off the shelf then that’s fine- this is for someone who likes making projects and it isn’t therefore necessarily about how much it costs compared to other things

I realised I had forgotten that after I’d finished making the video! There is an earth rod (two actually) so the whole home is earthed in the event of being off grid

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech Sorry is the house still not earthed when it is off grid through the incoming earth?

@@FireballXL55 When off-grid, the house is earthed via the earth rod because you can't rely on the incoming earth to still be working.

@SpeakToTheGeekTech I guess I was only thinking about a power cut where it would still be earthed and not that they maybe working on your local transformer.

Yeah my automation is already enabled for the bumper 2 hour session tomorrow :)

Thanks, but no, the costs are covered in other videos

@ it looks very expensive, I am guessing you wouldn’t get much change from £25k?

⁠@@struck2soonpricing isn’t fixed, it’s dropped significantly over the last year or so. But even at the pandemic peak, there would be plenty of change from that amount.

No, there's only the app or a developer API you can use which can give you a lot of data - see my other videos for a guide on Onecta cloud integration in Home Assistant.

@ yep rewatched that on day one. Have it working so will see what I can get from HA before dusting off my python

If you have an AIO already, I'd really suggest getting a second identical one if you are expanding. My dual-setup is really a bodge and a compromise. It's all about cost-benefit of diminishing returns though and there is a point where just paying for a bit of peak is a lot better value than extra storage.

Yes you can restrict the charge rate on the charger. And yes you can use GivTCP with the Octopus Energy integration from BottleCapDave so enable/disable charging when you get a cheap session.

I have the same setup and wating to add my charger. currently using a granny charger. What i want to do is monitor when Octopus gives me low rate charging during peak hours and force charging of the battery. If that works I may want to restrict the charging speed of the car to extend the cheap rate time.

Yes the solar diversion on the GivEVC works very well - I use the EM115 monitoring the grid with the EVC though which means it can respond to export power very quickly and totally separately to the batteries. BUT... now that my export rate is more than my off-peak import rate, it makes no financial sense to use solar diversion. The only reason you'd be using that feature is for eco/minimal grid use reasons because it would cost you money.

Totally possible using Home Assistant.

Glad it was helpful!

The default configuration I have provided updates it every 5 seconds. You can adjust that value lower if you like but I haven't tested it myself. Just be aware that Home Assistant will eat up storage space much more quickly if you are storing values more frequently so you may have to exclude it from logging.

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech I'll give that a try, thanks!

That worked a treat, thanks for the video! I just need to figure out why it sometimes takes the board a couple of minutes to connect to WiFi, but the energy monitoring bit itself works great.

I don't think that you can do that at all even with a subscription on eero. I certainly can't find that feature myself - have you spotted it documented somewhere?

It's not about saving money. This is a big misnomer with heat pump - they cost about the same to run as a gas boiler. Its value is in heating my home.

My test was just to demonstrate the apparent level of heat drop-off and was illustrative, it wasn't intended to be scientifically accurate. I'll be honest, I don't think I can be bothered setting up an experiment to test that for you but feel free to have a go yourself and share the results.

Odd. I just used a USB-A to USB-C cable straight from the Pi to the adapter when I tested it. Must have been just the correct sort of cable!

Glad it was useful, best of luck!

Yes it did but it was quite expensive to run. I use a dehumidifier in there instead now which costs a lot less. I still use this underfloor heating controller though from time to time because it is nice and warm on your feet!

Ha, maybe! I'm not sure size really matters though...

I might do a follow-up video on this because I've been using it continuously for months now and it is definitely working

Yes you can add points to the screen on the thermal master to display exact temperatures too

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech Thanks for sharing! It would be even better if the comparison footage showed the temperature readings side by side, but you've already provided a solid conclusion. Great video😉

Thermal Master also uses a temperature scale to display the lowest and highest temperatures… Seems like Geek isn’t too familiar with the features of P2😂 How about making a more detailed comparison video? @Speak to the Geek(I’m actually debating between the P2 and TOPDON right now.) But honestly, when it comes to resolution and design, the P2 is a no-brainer winner!😂

I can't control TH-cam putting the end screens in the middle of the video, I can only assume they have a bug at the moment?

There is a coupon for $50 off, not sure if it's applicable to your region, though.

There is a $50 coupon code on the product page. Hence $199 or £167 (for me, exchange rates/fees with other UK banks may vary).

My understanding is that it must be moved to a sealed/unvented system. But, I'm not a plumber, you should confirm that'll with an installer. An unvented system is considered my hygienic due to no open water tanks, but I understand your conundrum.

Many thanks, yes I replaced one of the aqualisa units last year at a cost of £700 for the new unit. Am a bit reluctant to replace two units but guess I could sell on like you did with some of your components. Thanks again for your helpful videos.

You're best off asking your question on the GivTCP Facebook group where you can post screenshots to help illustrate your issue, and there are a lot of people who can all provide you with advice: facebook.com/groups/615579009972782

Nice! I think there are 3 or 4 different brands all selling a remarkably similar looking 'P2' camera...

Could you point me to where you found the software? I've not been able to find it

@@nickkitson Google Play store - 'Temp Master'

Please do also check out my other videos about the Corsa-e. I had some issues with it later on which were fortunately sorted under warranty but could have been extremely expensive.

And Windows now too... but it's currently in use by a school's science department. You wouldn't want to deprive the children now would you?

@SpeakToTheGeekTech they're Welsh, surely they are used to being deprived

There is a scale in the app (and an official Windows app now too), perhaps I didn't show it well enough. Scales on both cameras are customisable but the P2 by default has a wider range of colours so things that are warmer stand out a lot more. I guess that could be considered the other way around that the less warm items appear colder, but it's all in the colour scheme used - you can tap a point to get the actual temperature.

Yes, it'd be better to lock them both to 0-50 °C range and test again. It's not possible to compare their abilities if one is using an unlocked scale as the tone maps will be totally different.

You’ll get more accurate results with the P2 if you use spot temperature measurement.

She gets free food, boarding and head tickles, what more could she ask for in return!?

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech 🤣🤣 to be fair you cant argue with that!

You have no idea how much willpower it took to not say either of those things in this video!

Whatever the value is for your actual entities. Look at the parts of the names after the xxxxxxxx, find those in your entity list and you'll see the missing values in their names.

Great to hear!

Glad it helped