[RELEASE] Emporia Vue Utility Connect Driver

⚙️ Custom Apps and Drivers
1

I purchased the $40 Emporia Vue Utility Connect Device that plugs into a standard wall plug and uses Zigbee to read my utility companies meter (PG&E in my case) and report the meter values to Emporia

I attempted to use the Emporia Vue driver for Hubitat that @ ke7lvb created for the Emporia Vue to see if it would also work for the Utility Connect device. The good news is the Utility Connect uses the same API as the Emporia Vue so ke7lvb driver worked but the child device was not necessary and it frequently was returning NULL values unless I clicked the refresh command multiple times.

This led me with the help of CoPilot to leverage ke7lvb driver code and create the following unique version that is specific for Emporia Vue Utility Connect Device

Emporia_Vue_Utility_Connect_Driver

With this driver I now have a Hubitat Dashboard that displays what my PG&E Power Meter is reading that matches what I can see in the Emporia Vue Mobile App.

I have also created a Hubitat Rule that leveragers the Control and Query your Tesla vehicles (via Tessie.com) - #241 by kahn-hubitat driver to turn the charger on my Tesla vehicle on or off depending on how much power I'm sending to the Grid which results in me being able to charge my Tesla at home for free since my Solar System is not a Tesla PowerWall or Emporia that has this feature built in to the Solar Inventor.

I'll likely create some other rules to turn devices on or off in my home depending on how much Power is being consumed or sent to the Grid.

This driver like Emporia Vue driver for Hubitat
requires an external script to get an authentication token (i.e. python)
until someone figures out how to create a Hubitat App that duplicates this Python code https://pypi.org/project/pyemvue

Steps to install this driver:

  1. Import the Driver into Hubitat
  2. Create a Virtual Device and set the "type" to "Emporia Vue Utility Connect Driver" and save the device
  3. Enter in the Authentication Token from the Python Script
  4. Push the "Get Device GID" command
  5. Save Preferences
  6. Check State values to confirm Token and GID has values
  7. Refresh
  8. The Driver States should now match what you see in the Emporia Vue Mobile App
  9. You can then proceed to update your Python Script to leverage the Marker API to automatically update the Authentication Key using the examples found in the [RELEASE] Emporia Vue driver for Hubitat - #6 by par.botes thread

I hope others who have purchased the Utility Connect product find this driver helpful

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