Received A Diagnostics Report
Unfortunately there is nothing I can do with it unless the user who submitted it gets in contact to give me more context about the fault. As always happy to try to resolve the problem, so please do get in touch.
Thanks!
Hi @David_Piper
Love the app so far. But trying to avoid running multiple apps for the same service, not just for the API calls, but also cos my Homey Pro 2026 is creaking under the strain of my smart home number of devices and automations ha ha… only has it since earlier this year and I’m almost ready for an upgrade already 
A few suggestions for like to have features (I’m not sure if they are all possible)
Under the Octopus Account device stats page, would it be possible to include Octoplus Points balance?
Saving & Power-up sessions starting in X mins/hrs flow trigger cards so you can automate powering things off/on, and notify yourself if you’re at home at the time to power off/on things that can’t be automated. That way you can take advantage of either free power, or saving power to gain rewards like a free hour of power.
You’re consideration and work on the app are greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Hi Andy (@Drako74)
I have been taking a bit of a rest from the app for a few months, but am girding up my loins (or something) to pursue it again.
Yes, I have a list of enhancements. Roughly speaking my priorities are:
- Get IOG dispatches working in line with the most recent changes being implemented by Octopus - this feels like a complicated piece of work and since I am not an IOG user I am dependent on other users to report the accuracy of the changes made.
- Complete the gas tariff device so that it includes period related data (making it a “standalone gas account” device).
- Octo points are on the list - shouldn’t be too hard from memory it’s a single data value on the account query.
- Saving and Power-Up sessions are the next major new features. Again there seems to be a fair bit of complexity here (for example the HA automation seems to rely on a third party website to know when savings sessions are planned - I have found data available through kraken but need to understand just how accurate this is). My memory is that Kraken treats Saving and Power-up sessions separately so one will probably get done before the other.
- Dashboard Widgets (eventually).
That should keep me occupied for a while…
Hi David @David_Piper
Thank you for your prompt and candid response, it is greatly appreciated. Yes indeed, getting yourself fired-up and motivated for complicated projects can be a feat in itself I have more unfinished projects than I care to own up to for that reason.
I’m fairly new to the world of Octopus, but so far loving it. Unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to help you with this one, as I don’t have solar or batteries… and my car couldn’t be further from an EV, having 2 seats and a turbo ha ha.
I do still have a gas combi-boiler for all my hot water and heating needs. I also still have my Glowmarkt CAD and it still works after I switched suppliers. So that provides live half hourly readings, and reads tariff, usage etc directly from the meters Zigbee HAN. Which might come in handy for testing this possibly?
This sounds like the simplest on your list. Would be fantastic if the account query returns this value, and you could just add it to the Electicity Account device. Happy to be a guinea-pig test case.
Hmmm… sounds complicated, which is a bugger. Octopus themselves seem to treat the Saving Sessions and Power-up Sessions as separate entities/events. This is probably because Power-ups are just about getting X hours of cheap/free power when grid demand is low. Whereas the Saving Sessions are about reducing load, and in return they calculate how much you lowered your consumption compared to your average (or something like that) and in return reward you with either Octopoints or free hours of electricity at a weekend for example. So one’s instant savings, while the other is about rewards. Or at least that’s the way I figure it, and why they keep them separate.
My thoughts were you’d have 2 pairs of When cards, a Session Starts in X mins/hours, and a Session has Ended. A pair for each of the 2 types.
I guess the simpler you can make it the better, if it gets too complicated there could be people struggling to use them. Again, happy to be a guinea-pig test case, as I do take part in as many of these sessions as I can, and want to automate powering up/down some things for them.
Would be a nice to have, but I’m not too bothered about widgets to be honest. I have a screen in my rack that displays an Insights graph of last 6 hours electricity usage (now from your app and Home Mini, used to be from my Glowmarkt CAD). Thank you!
If I can help at all with testing, bouncing ideas off etc just chuck me a message. And thank you again for a great and very useful app.
EDIT: Sorry, I didn’t mean to write an essay honest
You must an Octopus Home Mini so that will report 30 minute gas consumption data that the existing Gas Tariff device picks up (assuming you have Octopus Gas, of course). Have you tried the Gas Tariff device?
You and me both. Two pedants in the same room. A recipe for… perfection?
That kind of reflects my feelings about dashboards. I tend to use them for a week or two, then lose interest. I guess its a issue of perception. For me the essence of making automation work is to understand the data-driven events and respond to them every time they occur - typically multiple times a day or week. Accuracy of data is key to doing this.
A dashboard may be useful when an exception occurs - perhaps a few times a month. Looking for the unusual patterns of data that created the exception.
Which is more valuable?
Dashboards have their use. But when you have the device card providing stats, and the in-built Homey Insights graphs that can show you trends… in my personal opinion, that leaves widgets certainly at the bottom of the priority list. So agreeing with you, just the long way round ha ha.
One thing I would suggest elevating to the top of the list is the addition of the “Tracks total home energy” setting for the Octopus Account device so it’s live power usage is shown on the energy tab.
And so that the energy value isn’t added to your appliances energy monitoring, effectively doubling what shows up in the devices/Home page… that gave me a fright ha ha ha
That should be there already (it’s certainly intended to be that way) - but I know that some of the Energy Tab settings have proved resistant to being modified by the app. Will check it out.
They have made some changes to the Energy tab in a recent software update, to do with including energy export on the graph and stats showing on that tab. Could be that change broke that functionality for your app maybe?
But you can see when I uninstalled the old app the graph drops to zero (but if I reinstall that app too my Homey might implode 
it’s that low on memory ha ha)
I don’t know if it needs to have that Tracks total home energy setting or not?
Thanks for your time, legend 
Think we are violently agreeing… Here’s my energy wall:
No import or export right now (battery power). But you can see the Grid Energy is -13.2kWh = 2.3 - 15.5 kWh. Octopus Account appears LHS below the house (0 kW power now). And the settings have tracks total home energy consumption = YES. So that’s how it should be. The question is does the app set it that way when the device is created. TBC
Is that agreeing or a typo
So, after I finished my curry, I decided to have another crack at it, especially seeing your screenshot that does display the total home energy setting that mine lacked.
I tried deleting all three devices, the account one, the import tariff, and the gas tariff. Then re-added them. No change.
I scratched my head for a while, pondering how they could possibly be different… and then in a fit of sheer desperation I just re-installed the app over its running version (the exact same version) leaving the device cards in place… and Abracadabra! As if by magical means the setting appears, and the energy graph soars for the sky leaping into life. You couldn’t write this 
if you tried… oh wait…
I’m honestly not pulling your leg, it wasn’t there before, and the energy graph flatlined… re-installed your app over the top of itself (the exact same version number) and voila it’s working 
I shall go crawl back in my hole now
Computers, eh? Who needs em…
It’s Been A While
But I am getting back into developing the app now. Just made a test release that you can download here:
This release adds some minor new functionality. The Gas Tariff device now reports consumption and cost by chunk (30 minute reporting interval) as well as by day. The Account device now reports your Octoplus (Loyalty) Points Balance and their value.
Let me know how you get on.
Thank you good sir. Installed and testing. Loving the Octopoints display, works a treat Mighty grand job!
.
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EDIT: Similar to how the Gas Tariff device has the current (chunk) energy readout you can set as the cards status indicator value, would it noot make more sense to have the current (import) power available on the Import Tariff device card’s indicator value? (Just thinking that would be more logically consistent, if that makes sense?) So the Tariff devices showed the “live” (for that reporting interval/chunk of that fuel’s meter) consumption for each fuel, and the Account device showed the total imported energy for that Chunk/Day.
(Sorry just my logical Aspie brain being pedantic… I can’t help myself sometimes)
Hi Andy
Thanks for the feedback. It’s part of the evolving design of the app. The original intent was that the account device would be the “live” view and would include Gas (as live as it gets), Import and Export. Here’s the view of the account device with import and export power:
Argument against that is the sheer number of capabilities on the account device. It’s already 26 if you have both import and export. Adding gas chunk and instantaneous usage would take it to 29 or 30.
I guess I need to decide which approach is better. A third approach would be to have a new “current use” device that reflects chunk and instantaneous usage for all tariffs on the account (up to 3).
This would mean that the account device focuses on the financial aspect of the account (invoice period data, balance, loyalty…). Roughly the account device would include capabilities from the dates at the top to Day values 2/3 way down. For one, two and three tariffs that would be about 14, 18 or 22 capabilities. The “current use” device would be everything after day use (roughly 3, 6 or 9 capabilities) - chunk use, cost, instantaneous power.
I think this is a longer term change certainly after getting dispatches on IOG right.
Yes, I think you are right, that would be too much on the Account device, that is better kept to the overall account finance n loyalty stuff.
My thought behind having the live (or as close to live as possible for gas) on the individual Gas and Electric Import/Export devices is then you can set the Status Indicator to show the “live” value of each… so at a glance you can see how much you are consuming/generating. If that makes sense. (The equivalent of your in home display doo-dar, just separated out to Import, Export, and Gas) Maybe have a Net energy consumption on Account (Gas + Import - Export kinda thing)
Just my thoughts / opinions / suggestions.
Request for Feedback
My current focus is on getting back up to speed with the app, expanding the Gas tariff device and on getting IGO dispatches to work in line with the information from Octopus.
I am also keeping my eye on what to do next. It seems that the most obvious next step will be Power-Up and Power-Down sessions (aka free energy and rewards for reduced use). A couple of things have become apparent:
- Scheduling of these sessions is not part of “core” Kraken - they seem to be extensions to the core Kraken system that are provided through an alternative API (still using GQL syntax, though).
- The alternative API is built on less mature infrastructure - for example doing some simple testing last night revealed a 20 minute outage in that API.
- The Octopus Web App and Mobile Apps feed off this alternate API, so it’s “kind of official”, but I suspect it will be more dynamic in its content than “core” Kraken.
- There is a risk that trying to use these functions will result in the app suffering long response times if there is a service outage or crashing if the API definition changes in an unplanned way.
It’s also important to consider how best to support these Power-Up/Power-Down Sessions in Homey. My understanding is that they are planned at relatively short notice - typically only a few hours before the event starts. The rest of the data is historical in nature, relating to these events that have already occurred.
My proposal is as follows:
- Work out if there is a way to run the GQL request asynchronously so that it has less effect on the performance of the app if the API is out (or changes). The protection against changes is always going to be limited - so the app may start reporting errors making whatever functionality is provided in this area “less reliable”.
- Data about these events presented in the devices will be very limited. Probably just the date, time and duration of the next session (if any is planned).
- The main functionality will be Flow Trigger Cards
New {type} event planned to start in {count} minutes- signalled when a newly planned event is identified for the first time. Second trigger card will be{type} event has started. {type} is power-up, power-down (new type weekend-happy-hour too). - I reiterate my concern about the potential for these features to be less reliable than the rest of the app - and to have an impact on the execution of the rest of the app.
As users of the app, your feedback is solicited and will be appreciated.
It’s always great to get feedback and suggestions. So thanks for your input.
From my observations these events seem to get announced morning/midday-ish for that day’s evening peak load period. And the announcement text includes the timing of the event.
So trigger cards for the announcement, the start of the session, and the end of the session. The announcement to make you aware of it, to plan for any none smart devices etc. The start of the session to automate powering off/on smart devices. The end of the session to reverse the powering off/on. For example turn off air conditioning/battery charging for a power down session, then turn it back on after the session ends.
Might it be possible to have an app wide settings, and have a setting to enable/disable the power up/down functionality, so the user can choose, or just disable it if there is a problem on Octopus’s end so as not to impact the rest of the app.
