Watermeter for Home Assistant, Domoticz and Homey

Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie

Introduction

Some time ago I developed this watermeter gateway for remotely measuring the water usage of our house. It can read the waterusage when the watermeter is using a rotating dial with a metal plate on it. It can also be used for the Kent V100 or Elster V100 “grenade” type watermeters. The gateway sends the measurements by mqtt to the used domotica system like Home Assistant, domoticz and Homey. It also has an API on an internal webserver which can be read by other applications. It can be easily put on every watermeter with the provided velcro.

Available on SmartGateways.nl

Click here for the review on GadgetFreaks

Easy mounting

The gateway is using a small sensor which can be mounted on the meter. You can use the provided clip with double sided tape for this. Keep it further in place with additional velcro which is also in the box. This keeps the gateway cheap and usable on different kinds of meters without using some expensive mounts. The waterproof sensor is connected to the gateway by using a cable of 140cm. The gateway itself can be put on a dry place where there is enough WiFi coverage.

Configuration

Initial configuration can be done by connecting the gateway with a usb adapter of 5V and 1A (sold seperately). The gateway broadcasts the WiFi network “SmartGateways WATERMETER” which you can connect to using a smartphone. Just put in the current watermeter value and the watermeter factor. This is the muliplication factor of the rotating dial on the meter when a liter of water is used. Usually this is 1. Some meters use 10 (10 liters per rotation).

If you are using mqtt, you can fill in the mqtt broker details (you can find an installation manual in Dutch here

Press save when all the information is filled in. The gateway restarts and starts sending the water usage including some statistical data to the mqtt server.

MQTT topics

The watermeter gateway will publish the following mqtt topics to the configured broker:

These topics can be read by every software which can use mqtt such as Home Assistant, Domoticz of your own cloud application on a remote location. It can even use MQTT over TLS to ensure your data stays private.

Regular backups to internal memory

The gateway will backup the measurements on a hourly basis. If a power outage occurs, the gateway can restore the last measurements from backup. This keeps the gateway “in sync” with the real watermeter value when a power outage occurs. The backup will only be made when there is a change in the measurement so the internal flash memory will last for long.

Firmware updates

There will be new developments to the gateway on a regular basis. The gateway will check every hour if there is a new firmware update. When there is a firmware update available you will get notified by the mqtt topic “update_available” changing from “false” to “true”. Also the blue led on the gateway will start to blink fast to indicate there is a new firmware available.

You can remotely update the gateway by sending “yes” to the mqtt topic “watermeter/smart_gateways/install_update”. It will restart automatically when it is finished installing the update but it will make a backup of the current watermeter value first. The update buttong is integrated in the Home Assistant dashboard so you can update the gateway from there!

Don’t worry, if you blocked the Internet connection for your IOT devices, the gateway also works. You will get notified by mail if there are new updates available when you order the gateway on SmartGateways.nl

Leakage detection through AI

The watermeter gateway uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) to detect abnormal usage of water. When the gateway detects a leak it will send a mqtt topic and publish the information to the REST-API webpage. Within the Home Assistant dashboard the leak_detect value will change from false to true. There will be an update to the Homey app soon.

Home Assistant dashboard

The following dashboard can be added to Home Assistant:

All the important data of the watermeter will be displayed including usage per minute, hour, day, week and so on.

Costs of used water can be calculated within the Home Assistant dashboard

When you add the costs for water per liter, taxes and fixed prices for water delivery the costs will be displayed on the Home Assistant Water Meter Gateway dashboard too!

Just follow this instruction to add the dashboard to Home Assistant: https://haprofs.com/watermeter-koppelen-aan-home-assistant/

Domoticz

You can use Domoticz to connect to the watermeter gateway. A detailed instruction can be found here: https://haprofs.com/watermeter-uitlezen-met-domoticz/

Homey

The Watermeter Gateway has it’s own app in the Homey App store. You can find it here:

https://homey.app/nl-nl/app/com.cyclone-software.smartgateways/SmartGateways/

Power supply

The watermeter kit comes with a USB Power supply of 5V-1A and with a usb cable of 1 meter.

Now available!

The Watermeter Gateway is available smartgateways.nl for € 49,50. This is including the velcro strap for easy mounting and a quick-start manual. Shipping is available to most European countries.