Comms Hub Fault?

EssexHebridean

I suspect that the answer to this will be to ring the supplier and register a fault, however, thought it was worth digging a bit here first.

I noticed this morning that we'd had no meter readings sent to Octopus since the early hours of Monday. The use is still showing on the daily graphs in the Octopus app, but the weekly ones show a tiny amount of electricity use for Monday, then the rest of this week blank, and the gas simply says "your readings are on the way". (The IHD shows use as usual.) Bright shows fractionally more electricity use, and Loop is showing readings up to 0700hrs. 

A look at the comms hub confirms that all is not well - the WAN light is flashing consistently, with the others (aside from mesh, which I wouldn't expect to be doing anything) joining it on roughly their usual schedule. As a rule I see the 4 "active" lights flash together approx every 5 or so seconds. 

Has anyone else had experience of this, and if so, did it resolve itself? If it did, can you recall how long it took to do so?

If it needs a report and a reset I'd sooner get that in play ASAP as we will at some stage before all that long be intending to switch to either Agile or Tracker - so this is not a good time for a smart meter issue!

Reed_Richards

I use n3rgy https://data.n3rgy.com/consumer-login to download my half-hourly meter readings, also Loop.  After my smart meter had a dissimilar fault in March I looked into the way these services work and was assured that when you request data it is downloaded from your meter at that time, no data is held on a database.  So if your comms hub is not communicating you shouldn't get any data.  If Loop and Bright respond with data then that should mean your comms hub is working, or working well enough to be functional. 

I forget the meter flash codes but you can look them up.  Once every 5 seconds is normal for the WAN light.

I don't see that there is any harm in reporting the problem.  Whether Octopus will or can do anything about it is another matter,

    

Scot_39

Try reading from page 28 -  


https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/media/1096/ch-supporting-information-v17-final.pdf


But as far as I can tell from a brief read 5 sec is low frequency flash - normal, not fault.

EssexHebridean

Thanks - yes, the 5 second flash is the normal pattern and would indicate all is well, hence the WAN light stood out as obviously not being right. 

I suspect the reason why I am still getting data to the app for the daily graphs is because of the home mini - hence I can see what that has to say, and so can see my daily use, but the weekly and monthly graphs are populated from the normal data pulls, and so they aren’t getting the data. This also ties in with the third party apps having slightly more data than Octopus do as they update more regularly I believe. 

I’ve spoken with Octopus this morning - they have run some checks remotely and can confirm that they currently have no communication from the meter, so we are now on the list for an engineer visit which they say they expect to be within 2-3 weeks, although time will tell on that one.

it’s more annoying than anything else at the moment. I can get readings manually via the IHD so it’s just a case of remembering to submit those monthly until it’s sorted.  We have two clear months before we can jump off the fix without charge, so I may need to start making a bit of a PITA of myself at that stage if it’s not sorted by then, we’ll see! 

Reed_Richards

Have a look at this thread https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6517357/how-to-fill-the-data-gap/p1 and the discussion that ensues on where the data obtained by third party aps comes from.  I thought I was being told that if your comms hub could not communicate then you could not access any data from third party apps like Bright or Loop.  Perhaps I misunderstood?  In my case, I experienced a period of 12 days when no half-hourly data was recorded, despite there being no indication of a comms problem.  I think your meter should still be logging your half hourly data, even though it is not immediately able to communicate it.  But I could be wrong about that too.       

Spoonie_Turtle

Reed_Richards said:

I think your meter should still be logging your half hourly data, even though it is not immediately able to communicate it.  But I could be wrong about that too.       

Yes, it can hold 13 months' worth from what I've read on this board.

Reed_Richards

Yes, I've also read about the "13 months' worth".  But since your supplier would normally ask it for just the previous 24 hours' worth of data maybe a "special request" is required to get more?   

EssexHebridean

Reed_Richards said:

Have a look at this thread https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6517357/how-to-fill-the-data-gap/p1 and the discussion that ensues on where the data obtained by third party aps comes from.  I thought I was being told that if your comms hub could not communicate then you could not access any data from third party apps like Bright or Loop.  Perhaps I misunderstood?  In my case, I experienced a period of 12 days when no half-hourly data was recorded, despite there being no indication of a comms problem.  I think your meter should still be logging your half hourly data, even though it is not immediately able to communicate it.  But I could be wrong about that too.       

I think the reason why Loop have data to further through the day on Monday than either Octopus or Bright is as simple as they update more often. I'm pretty sure that Octopus just pull once a day - seemingly at about 0030, and that would indeed tie in with the tiny bit of use they have from Monday. Bright also presumably pulled the data shortly after that time, with Loop either requesting data more often, or it being simple coincidence that they made their request later in the day. I've got a feeling that I remember seeing before that Loop's data seems to update something like hourly in normal circumstances though?

Yes - I'm hopeful that as and when things are fixed I may well get my data delivered into the app - it would certainly be handy if so, as obviously with us not having been in the house a year yet, this first year's data was going to be particularly useful to me. In any event, if I had to I could build up the full picture by using the daily data - albeit that would be quite fiddly and labour intensive, or come to that by using my manually taken meter readings - I may yet be glad that is a habit I've not got out of since moving here!

BarelySentientAI

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Reed_Richards said:

I think your meter should still be logging your half hourly data, even though it is not immediately able to communicate it.  But I could be wrong about that too.       

Yes, it can hold 13 months' worth from what I've read on this board.

I don't read that as meaning "13 months of half-hour data" - but rather "the cumulative consumption in the 13 months prior to the present month".  If that's where the 13 months suggestion originally came from.

Although the 30 minute data actually gets stored in something called the "Profile data log", and I can't find how long that is kept for.

[Deleted User]

BarelySentientAI said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Reed_Richards said:

I think your meter should still be logging your half hourly data, even though it is not immediately able to communicate it.  But I could be wrong about that too.       

Yes, it can hold 13 months' worth from what I've read on this board.

I don't read that as meaning "13 months of half-hour data" - but rather "the cumulative consumption in the 13 months prior to the present month".  If that's where the 13 months suggestion originally came from.

Although the 30 minute data actually gets stored in something called the "Profile data log", and I can't find how long that is kept for.

It's covered in section 5.6.4.28 of the smets2 tech spec - the profile data log holds 13 months of 30 minute consumption data.

BarelySentientAI

[Deleted User] said:

BarelySentientAI said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Reed_Richards said:

I think your meter should still be logging your half hourly data, even though it is not immediately able to communicate it.  But I could be wrong about that too.       

Yes, it can hold 13 months' worth from what I've read on this board.

I don't read that as meaning "13 months of half-hour data" - but rather "the cumulative consumption in the 13 months prior to the present month".  If that's where the 13 months suggestion originally came from.

Although the 30 minute data actually gets stored in something called the "Profile data log", and I can't find how long that is kept for.

It's covered in section 5.6.4.28 of the smets2 tech spec - the profile data log holds 13 months of 30 minute consumption data.

Good knowledge as usual mmmmikey.