prpd is a software and hardware solution to make monitoring information from the NEDAP PowerRouter available although their cloud service was shot down at 2021-01-31.
The Methods were tested with NEDAP PowerRouter PR37Bi Version 7.1.2.
I had this running for some time and it worked fine, but unfortunately the Battery of the PowerRouter broke and the PowerRouter does not support current Batteries, so the whole System was replaced, and I have no longer a system to test with.
The PowerRouter normally sends monitoring data every minute via a HTTP-POST
request to logging1.PowerRouter.com. This is done without any encryption, so
we can simple bend the network traffic into our direction and read the data.
Some of the data is collected via a RS485 interface of EM24 Energy Sensors by Carlo Gavazzi. This data is transfered about every second. As the PowerRouter is already a master on the bus we don't want to disturb any communication and simple tap into the data lines and listen to the communication.
In order to tab into the RS485 lines, one could access the EM24 Sensors and add some wires there, but the Sensors are in the fuse box and one doesn't mess with this one normally.
There is also the need for additional hardware because most of the linux boards don't support RS485 out of the box. A normal RS485 USB-dongle may be used.
On the other hand, most linux boards do have UART exposed on some headers, so we can add a UART - RS485 transceiver. The SP3485 has also the handy feature that it can be configured in a way that it is not possible to write to the RS485 bus, an ideal feature for our application.
prpw is written in a way that it should be possible to add you favourite output. Currently the following outputs are available:
Outputs the data on MQTT so it is possible for Home Assistant to auto discover all available Data.
Output the data on MQTT so OpenWB can read the data. This is not done yet, but will be definitely implemented in the near future.
With this output it's possible to scrape the data with prometheus.
Configuration is done via environment variables.
PRPD_ACTION: how to obtain the data. eitherserialorhttp. If you want to get data from http and serial, you have to run the programm twice.PRPD_OUTPUT_HASS_ACTIVE:1if you want to activate the homeassistant outputPRPD_OUTPUT_HASS_MQTT_URI: mqtt broker for homeassistant output, defaults totcp://localhost:1883PRPD_OUTPUT_PROM_ACTIVE:1if you want to activate the prometheus outputPRPD_OUTPUT_PROM_PORT: sets the port of the prometheus output. If you want to run serial and http in parallel, you have to specify two different ports and configure two differen datasources. in prometheus.PRPD_SERIAL_PORT: serial port (like/dev/ttyUSB0) where to listen for data
# installing rustup
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh # https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install
source $HOME/.cargo/env
rustup toolchain install nightly
rustup default nightly
# installing build dependencies
apt-get install pkg-config libudev-dev cmake
# install target support (only if you want to run this on GL-AR150)
rustup target add mips-unknown-linux-musl
# installing tool to compress executable (only if you want to run this on GL-AR150)
apt-get install upx
bash dev/run_http.sh # to start the http server
bash dev/http_post_log.sh # to send some test data to the server
bash dev/serial_socat.sh # to create a virtual serial port
bash dev/run_serial.sh # to start prpd in serial mode
python3 dev/serial_write_data.py # to send data to virtual serial portGL-AR150 is a cheap, low power network device that can be used as a platform for prpd. The idea is to use a low power device to gather the data and then send it to a more powerful device in order to store the data.
Use at your own risk!