Water Meter Dashboard for Home Assistant

Introduction:

In this post I am going to guide you through the process of integrating your analogue water meter into Home Assistant. After going through this guide you are able to track water consumption with the Home Assistant Energy Dashboard. Also, you have the most complete Watermeter Dashboard for Home Assistant you can dream of.

You can use the default Home Assistant Energy Dashboard and you can use the Advanced Water Meter dashboard from Smart Gateways shown below:

Click here for a LIVE DEMO. Username: demo – password: smartgateways

Making your old water meter smart

You can wirelessly read your analog water meter using WiFi, making it a smart device. Transforming your analogue water meter into a smart water meter allows you to remotely access and track your water consumption through a user-friendly watter consumption overview. By doing so, you can conserve water, which contributes to environmental sustainability. The recommended solution for achieving this is the Smart Gateways Water Meter Gateway. By attaching a sensor to the water meter, it records water usage and transmits the data to Home Assistant.

The Smart Gateways Water Meter Gateway comes in two versions:

• Version A: For water meters with a metal plate or nfc chip on a rotating wheel

• VERSION B: For water meters with a slot for a magnetic reed-sensor (mostly used in Belgium, Great Britain and Australia)

In this post, I will guide you on creating a comprehensive dashboard that displays all the values from the Smart Gateways Water Meter Gateway. The dashboard not only presents consumption and costs per day, week, month, and year but also empowers you to make your water meter intelligent by utilizing the Smart Gateways Water Meter Dashboard for Home Assistant. Actually Smart Gateways was the first company providing an off the shelf solution that could make your analogue water meter smart. A few years later the Smart Watermeter Gateway is used all over the world to get insights into water consumption.

The Smart Gateways Watermeter Dashboard for Home Assistant is the perfect complement to Home Assistant’s existing energy dashboard. Of course you can use both dashboards next to each other. Just pick the dashboard you like the most.

Home Assistant Energy Dashboard with Water usage shown below:

Pre-requirements to setup the dashboard

Setting up the dashboard can be done in a few easy steps. Complete each step one by one and verify if the step is completed before proceeding with the next step.

1. First install Mosquitto MQTT Broker on Home Assistant using this manual
2. Connect the Water Meter Gateway using the Installation Manual found on the Smart Gateways Support page
3. Enter the MQTT settings on the internal webpage of the Water Meter Gateway
4. Install HACS (Home Assistant Community Store) using this manual

Install the Apexcharts-card plugin into Home Assistant

When you completed all the above steps it’s time to add the apexcharts-card repository to Home Assistant. You have to do this using HACS.

1. Click HACS on the sidebar of Home Assistant
2. Click Frontend
3. Click EXPLORE & DOWNLOAD REPOSITORIES in the lower right corner
4. Type apexcharts-card in the Search for repository box
5. Click DOWNLOAD in the lower right corner
6. Select the latest version and Click DOWNLOAD
7. RELOAD the browser to activate the apexcharts-card plugin

Add additional MQTT Configuration for diagnostical data

*Send a copy of your order or the invoice (not the shipment information) to support@smartgateways.nl to receive the password for the configuration files.

The Advanced Water Meter Dashboard for Home Assistant will show some diagnostical data from the Smart Water Meter Gateway. This data is sent by the gateway through MQTT. You can add this to Home Assistant by adding a mqtt file. You first have to install the File editor Add-on.

1. Within your Home Assistant frontend/home navigate to the Settings menu
2. Click Add-ons
3. Click ADD-ON STORE in the lower right corner
4. Go to the Search add-ons box
5. Type File editor
6. Click on File editor from the list
7. Click INSTALL and wait for the File editor to be installed
8. Enable Start on boot, Show in sidebar and Watchdog
9. Click START to start the broker

Add the Packages directory to Home Assistant and place some configuration files

When using the packages directory for all your .yaml configuration files, you are able to sort all configuration in specific files for each integration. You have to edit the configuration.yaml file first for Home Assistant to use the packages directory.

1. The file editor is shown in the sidebar. Click on the File editor icon
2. Click on the configuration.yaml file
3. The contents of the configuration.yaml file are shown
4. Insert the following configuration into the file:

   • homeassistant:
       packages: !include_dir_named packages

5. Click the save button (Floppy Disk Icon) on the upper right corner to save the configuration.yaml
6. Click on the Browse File System Icon on the upper bar
7. Click on the New Folder icon (second icon)
8. name the new folder packages
9. Click OK
10. Download the following file (disable pop-up blockers)
11. Enter Password to Download:

    Download Dashboard file
12. Unpack the zip file
13. Place the file smartgateways_watermeter.yaml in the packages folder by using the Upload File button within the File editor Add-on
14. Save the file
15. Restart Home Assistant

Add the Advanced Energy Dashboard to Home Assistant

When you completed all the above steps it’s time to add the Advanced Energy Dashboard to Home Assistant.

1. Enable Advanced Mode for your user account
   • Within your Home Assistant frontend/home navigate your user profile (in the lower left corner)
   • Enable Advanced Mode to unlock advanced features
2. Open the file watermeter_dashboard.txt from the downloaded zip file and copy the contents of this file to the clipboard
3. Click the three dots in the upper right corner of the dashboard in Home Assistant

1. Click on the 3 dots again
2. Click Raw configuration editor
3. Scroll till the end and start a new line
4. Paste the contents of the Dashboard panels file into the editor
5. Click SAVE in the upper right corner
6. Close the editor by clicking the cross on the upper left corner
7. Restart Home Assistant
8. Notice the new Advanced Smart Meter Dashboard.

Water Costs

It is possible to enter the costs for water consumption into the dashboard. There are 3 values to be filled in. You can find those values in the lower right corner. Please note that these costs are based on water consumption in the Netherlands. You can ask your water company for the prices.

• Water – Belasting: Tax on water (per liter)
• Water – Prijs per liter: Price per liter
• Water – Vastrecht: Fixed price you have to pay per year to the water company

Prices have to be filled in in Liters. Home Assistant works with cubic meters so you have to divide the values by 1000. Amounts are very small because water prices are low in the Netherlands. You can remove the prices from the dashboard if you don’t use them.

Adding the Water Meter Gateway to the Home Assistant Energy Dashboard

1. Within your Home Assistant frontend/home navigate to the Settings menu
2. Click Dashboards
3. Click Energy in the lower right corner
4. Go to Water Consumption
5. Click ADD WATER SOURCE
6. Add connectix_watermeter_totaal
7. Click SAVE

If everything went right you will see your water consumtion on the Energy Dashboard: