www.brultech.com

Well I took the plunge and after much research on other products, I have found Brultech products to have the most to offer including expansion and the added bonus of pulse and temperature monitoring.

It was the only product I found that offered truly complete home energy monitoring for every circuit compared it it's competitors.

So today I ordered the following:

GreenEye Energy Monitor with WiFi & Ethernet Module
DashBox (Ordered a TL-WN722N from Amazon for WiFi access)
4 x Split-200 CT's
60 x Micro-50 CT's
8 x Micro-80 CT's



I would like to take this opportunity to thank Teken, Ben and Tammy, for all their time and effort is answering my questions and helping me make sure I ordered the exact system I needed for what I wanted to accomplish.

Thank You

I truly believe you will be very satisfied and happy with your purchase. Outside of the ISY-994 home automation controller. The Brultech Green Eye Monitor (GEM) and Dash Box (DB) are an investment.

The amount of information and awareness both products bring to the end user is invaluable. The key thing for me and many of the other owners has been the superb *Service after the sale* support and guidance provided by the Brultech family.

Development has continued on a steady pace in many areas.

Even with out the added features of the base (GEM). The GEM system offers the most value per monitored circuit load. When you compare other systems in the Internet, and look very closely you will find many short comings in terms of what is being offered and for how much.

When you add in the on going development of the Dash Box (DB) to the GEM ecosystem. The user has a end to end solution which they have full control over. It does not require a rocket scientist to install or set up, just some time.

No thanks needed as your contributions in the future will help out many more in the not too distant future!

Please ensure you update your GEM to the latest COM / Engine firmware before you begin. Ensure your GEM is fully operational before you add the Dash Box to the mix. Please stay on the last official Dash Box firmware release until you're comfortable with Beta testing.

This will ensure you're familiar with the operations and expected behaviour of the Dash Box / GEM combination. No need to add in more complexity to a *initial install* right from the beginning.

I agree with everything Teken stated
Out of morbid curiosity, 72 CT's ??
by the 4X split 200's I assume you have a sub panel, but 72 ???
..Barry

bgrubb1 wrote:I agree with everything Teken stated
Out of morbid curiosity, 72 CT's ??
by the 4X split 200's I assume you have a sub panel, but 72 ???
..Barry

Well...not a sub panel, but yes I have 2 panels, each panel has 200A lines coming in from outside.

Panel 1:
20A x 38
Panel 2:
20A x 7 (1 x 240V)
30A x 4 (240V)
50A x 3 (240V)
60A x 4 (240V)

Have a look at: http://www.brultech.com/home/community/ ... =30&t=1021

I can't wait to get my quote, I'm looking at a very similar setup to yours. My only remaining thing I need to figure out is if I should get the dashbox or not?

If I were to use SEG to monitor my data, would I be able to look at my data/usage in the same way if I had a dashbox? Or does the dashbox give me more flexibility in sorting, viewing decifering my usage per circuit? In otherwords, can I "customize" the data I look at with either the dashbox or SEG?

If I read everything right, the one advantage of the dashbox is that if SEG or my network goes down, my data will be averaged, but with the dashbox (connected via RS232), I won't loose any data if my network goes down.

Hopefully I can get a better understanding of what the benefits of the dashbox are. I've looked at Tekken's garagejournal page, but still have some remaining questions above.

kdroyer wrote:If I were to use SEG to monitor my data, would I be able to look at my data/usage in the same way if I had a dashbox? Or does the dashbox give me more flexibility in sorting, viewing decifering my usage per circuit? In otherwords, can I "customize" the data I look at with either the dashbox or SEG?

SEG is a wonderful service, and it has *the* best plotting/visualization capabilities. however, if you rely only on SEG you will lose data from time to time.

dashbox is coming along very nicely, and ensures that you will get a local copy of your data no matter what happens on the network or to SEG. you can also roll-your-own local data collection and plotting with btmon and emoncms. you could also upload to multiple services, not just SEG (such as xively).

one of the best features of the brultech hardware is that there are many options for using it.

m

kdroyer wrote:I can't wait to get my quote, I'm looking at a very similar setup to yours. My only remaining thing I need to figure out is if I should get the dashbox or not?

If I were to use SEG to monitor my data, would I be able to look at my data/usage in the same way if I had a dashbox? Or does the dashbox give me more flexibility in sorting, viewing decifering my usage per circuit? In otherwords, can I "customize" the data I look at with either the dashbox or SEG?

If I read everything right, the one advantage of the dashbox is that if SEG or my network goes down, my data will be averaged, but with the dashbox (connected via RS232), I won't loose any data if my network goes down.

Hopefully I can get a better understanding of what the benefits of the dashbox are. I've looked at Tekken's garagejournal page, but still have some remaining questions above.

Please ensure you follow along using this thread and not the old Garage Journal link: http://brultech.com/home/community/view ... ?f=2&t=929

As I am actively updating the Brultech forum thread instead of the other. If the budget allows purchasing the Dash Box to compliment the SEG site is a excellent idea.

You have the best of both worlds in terms of charts, graphs, tools. But also redundant back up of your energy, temperature, pulse, voltage data.

This is the public facing SEG link to my energy account: https://smartenergygroups.com/groups/teken_energy

My GEM & DB arrived yesterday (22nd) , only took 4 days to get here from Canada, not bad at all.

Next step to is schedule downtime with boss (wife) for when I can cut the power and hook everything up.

Very excited to start some monitoring on power usage in our home.

Congrats, and take lots of photos to share in the projects forum.


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Just a suggestion -
Before I attached my Gem / DB to the wall near my power panel, I set it up on a bench by my PC and updated / configured / figured it out. I even spilt the power cord on a space heater and put a CT on it. This made the actual "Install" go much smoother / less down time.
..Barry