readme.txt

MeterX by Steve Tibbett (stevex-github@gmail.com)

This is a fairly simple program that was intended to be the start of something bigger.

In it's current form, it's an Insteon PLM (PowerLineModem) protocol client that uses a TCP connection to an Insteon 2412N device to send commands over the power line / wireless mesh to an Insteon iMeter Solo (2423A1), to retrieve the current power consumption in watts of whatever device is connected to the iMeter. It retrieves the watt usage and displays it in a huge number on the display of whatever is running the app.

It's a Flex Mobile app, and the intention was to build this for Android and iOS as an app that would let you monitor power consumption from anywhere in your house (or beyond, depending on your network configuration).

But, as I discovered once I acquired a few other Insteon devices, my house is not Insteon compatible. Insteon requires specific wiring, with line, load, neutral and ground all available at the switch, and my house isn't wired that way. (Our last house, which was built new, was wired for Insteon because I had that written into the plans).

Since I'm not building out an Insteon network at home, I'm not going to pursue the Insteon software I was building. So I'm releasing the code, as-is, for others to hopefully use as a starting point.

To use the included app, assuming you have the required hardware, entere the Insteon address (the 3 byte hex value) of your iMeter Solo in the powerMeterAddress field of ModemController, enter the IP address of your 2412N in AppModel's constructor, and that's it - you should have an app that can show you power consumption in watts, updated every 5 seconds, of whatever device is plugged into the iMeter.

There are a few useful things here:

app.insteon.PowerLineModem

This class will connect given a host and port number, to a 2412N.  The 2412N
offers PLM through TCP, but in a shaky, undocumented form.  The only really shaky
thing about it is that it only supports one client, so I had planned to create a
multiplexer that would let other home control software connect as well as this
app and any other, but that didn't get off the ground.

But this class does understand how to send and receive Insteon packets, including
assembling incoming variable length packets.

app.insteon.ModemResponseParser

This class, in conjunction with the insteon.xml file, can parse an Insteon command
or response to determine the type and fields.  It understands that packets can
be varying sizes based on what bits are set in what bytes, so the file includes a
mechanism for inspecting the packet bytes received so far to determine how many
more bytes to expect for a given packet.

insteon.xml

This is an XML representation of a lot of a lot of information about Insteon packets
for various devices.  Hopefully it's somewhat self-explanatory.

Some useful links for anyone doing Insteon development:

http://sharpeespace.blogspot.com/2011/03/insteon-2412n-protocol.html https://github.com/zonyl/pyinsteon/blob/master/src/pyinsteon.py http://www.insteon.net/pdf/INSTEON_Command_Tables_20070925a.pdf http://www.aartech.ca/docs/2412sdevguide.pdf

Good luck; I hope someone finds this useful.