Step-by-step how-to guide connect the P1 Landis+Gyr Energy meter, on a Raspberry Pi 4, with the latest Raspbian Buster image and Domoticz.

This how-to is part of a bigger series of Domoticz how-to’s on sancla.com!

Until recently most Dutch household’s where provided with an old analog energy meter, for electricity and natural gas. These meters have been replaced in recent years (per designation of Dutch law) with a new generation P1 smart energy meters. Apart from the fact that the energy companies can now remotely read out the meters, they are also equipped with a local data port. This port can be utilized to constantly monitor these energy-meters including the meter values.

In this how-to we are going to connect this smart meter to our Raspberry Pi based Domoticz installation.

This tutorial has been verified with:
Domoticz 2020.1

Prerequisites

• Running Domoticz installation with stable Raspbian Buster release and SSH access.
  See my previous post for a how-to:
  https://sancla.com/domoticz/raspberry-pi-4-with-domoticz/
• A USB to analog cable (see post further up ahead for more information)
  https://aliexpress.com/i/33030782411.html
  https://nl.aliexpress.com/store/4276026

Tested with

• Raspbian Buster Lite 4.19, Februari 2020
• Domoticz Stable 2020.1 (compile date 22-3-2020)
• TFDI FT232RL based USB to serial to RJ11 cable (P1 cable)

USB to serial to RJ11 cable

Our Chinese friends are well versed in preparing and making P1 cable solutions that also work well in combination with Domoticz. Under prerequisites are 2 links included with which you can order them ready-made. Also, these cables can often be ordered well through European web shops with a shorting shipping time (but often the price is higher).

For this post I ordered a cable from China and took it apart for you, so that you can see for yourself how they work. That way you can save even more costs by ordering the parts separately in China and assembling them yourself.

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Configuring the P1 Smart Meter

Once you have the right cable, you can hook it up to your energy meter and Domoticz. After this, configure the new hardware device as follows:

• Enabled: Enabled
• Name: P1 Energy Meter
• Type: P1 Smart Meter USB
• Data Timeout: Disabled
• Serial Port: Select your USB to serial adapter, in this case the TFDI FT232RL chip based adapter
• Baudrate: 115200 bits per second (baud)
• CRC message validation: Enabled
• Rate Limit: empty

It can take a while for all devices to become visible in Domoticz, as these devices will only receive an update if the value in the meter changes. For example the gas meter, it will often take a while before it becomes visible. Certainly in the summer, when gas consumption is low, this can take some time.