Approaching measurements

[michalk-k]

Hello
I have several devices I could create profiles for for the Powercalc (Twinkly, Govee). I have questions about how to approach some cases:

1. may I use HA (core) installation to run measurement tool? or it’s only possible/advised with use of another computer?
2. I understand, that the measurement tool controls measured entity through HA, changing its light properties over time then storing measured energy draw. Is it advised to use direct connection with measurement device (ie Shelly)? or it’s ok to read data from HA entity reflecting already integrated measurement device?
3. how to approach devices that play some animations (Christmas tree strings for example)? does the measurement tool goes through available effects and all brightness for each of them?
4. Still, there might be:

• dynamic effects like ones depending on music. Without music they might draw less energy.
• new effects/animations not available as selectable effects
  How to approach that?

With regards

Michal Bartak

[bramstroker]

1. may I use HA (core) installation to run measurement tool? or it’s only possible/advised with use of another computer?

You mean HA OS, or you are just running core natively on Python or docker.
In the latter case, sure you can just run it in docker.
When it is HA OS I don't think you can as you cannot as there is no way to install docker / run that in CLI.

2. I understand, that the measurement tool controls measured entity through HA, changing its light properties over time then storing measured energy draw. Is it advised to use direct connection with measurement device (ie Shelly)? or it’s ok to read data from HA entity reflecting already integrated measurement device?

Yes, lights are controlled through HA REST API. Or there is also support for Hue bridge if you are using that.
For the Power meter client there are also multiple implementations. Yes you can use the hass to read the entity (also with the REST API), that should work just fine.
But there also is shelly implementation which use direct shelly API, so that would have the lowest latency.
Both should work just fine, but it's adviced to try to get the shelly one running first.

3. how to approach devices that play some animations (Christmas tree strings for example)? does the measurement tool goes through available effects and all brightness for each of them?

That's not supported (yet).

Also have a look at: #2724.
Where twinkly light has been added. That contributor measured all the different effect, but they didn't have any noticable effect on power usage. So for that profile it was fine.
But yes if a light has different effects and it effects the power usage significantly then we cannot add profile to the library yet.

I may have a look into adding effects support to the measure tool in the future and cycling through that. But than also the integrations and LUT code must change. It's not any easy development.

4. Still, there might be:

• dynamic effects like ones depending on music. Without music they might draw less energy.
• new effects/animations not available as selectable effects
  How to approach that?

Same as above, that's not support yet.

[michalk-k]

thank you for quick answer.

Yeah, I also noticed that the Twinkly (Icicle) draws the same energy regardless leds intensity. Pretty surprising.

If some features are not supported it's better to not provide any built-in profile or to provide it with known limitations? I'm thinking about situation where a user believes for correct measurement regardless unsupported mode is set to a light.

with regards
Michal

[bramstroker]

I would say not to include it in built-in library as users may have the light at settings which the profile does not correctly cover.
You are free to put the profile in local custom library. https://docs.powercalc.nl/library/library/#custom-models

Also please let me know if you choose to not submit a certain model to built-in library because of certain limitation (effects etc.)
Then we can see how we can support use cases like this in the future.

[michalk-k]

Sure. Thank you.