Update on this btw, I had some questions during installation and they were answered promptly by a guy at the company called Jack and another guy called Jack and another guy called Jacques for amusing "No sorry, you were speaking to a different Jack" just like twenty years ago when I did call centre tech support with five other Dans.

Also the thing I bought went on sale like a week after I installed it so I sent a cheeky email to the company which I will replicate here for transparency, subject line "Being cheeky and asking for free smart plugs and also an app suggestion":

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Hey folks, Jack, Jacques, whoever else works there who I haven't talked to yet, on the 8th of this month I blew two hundred bucks on one of your Vue energy monitors (very nice by the way) and then eleven brief days later I get an email telling me that if I'd shown even a sniff of restraint I could've gotten the bundle deal and had the monitor and four smart plugs for the same money.

If left unchecked, the lesson I'll take from this is "Always wait to buy a thing," and as a seller of Things this might understandably give you the heebiejeebies, because who knows how long I'll wait? You can remedy this situation by sending me some smart plugs as a goodwill gesture, that I will happily post about on social media (on Mastodon, so it'll be an audience of freaks and weirdos, but at least freaks and weirdos who enjoy energy monitoring). Here's the thread so far, if you're curious and/or nosy: https://retro.social/@ifixcoinops/113478639382007122

(speaking of freaks and weirdos, I'm aware that some folks have been asking for official Home Assistant / ESPHome firmware support, so please do me a favour and yell across the office to your boss that there's another one)

By the by, the main CT clamps wouldn't fit around the cables in my 1990-era panel so I left them off. The monitor continues to work fine with the smaller coils clamped onto each circuit, and I get a readout at the top of the app's home screen for my total energy use as the sum of all the individual circuit CT's - but if I tap on that total-use readout, I don't get the daily/weekly/monthly etc graphs I would expect. An option within the app to graph out the sum of all circuit CT's would be really handy for folk like me who don't have room for the Big Clamps.

Thanks!

~Dan

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In response to this email they sent me four smart plugs AND the expensive flexible rubbercoated mains loops for free. I told them in November 2024 that I'd post about them on this thread and then I never did because I'm lazy.

Companies: give me free stuff so I can post about it over a year later

@ifixcoinops to start with, I’d like to know the (easy) ways to do an audit.

From a smart home perspective, we’re pretty above average (but not advanced), but focused on HomeKit (with homebridge)

What energy meters do you recommend. What steps and process to use to audit the home (both once and ongoing)