Eyedro Home Energy Monitor – Real-Time Electricity Usage Monitor with Solar Net Metering – Whole House Power Consumption Monitor – WiFi/Ethernet Smart Energy Meter with Reports & History, 2 Sensors

I purchased this a week ago, and installed it literally in a few minutes. I did not even look at the directions, it's just too simple. The install is really easy if you're at all handy and not afraid of your load panel. Simply put, you remove the cover from your load panel, open the sensor by pushing in the little clip, slide the sensor around one of the power mains, and clip it shut. Repeat for the other sensor. Drop the wires out of the panel and replace the cover. Then connect the sensors to the EyeDro box, run an ethernet cable to it, and plug in the power. Voila! Next, go to their website and register an account, and either enter the serial number from the box or click the "Scan network" option which will find it. That's it, you're up and running! The box itself is very small, about the size of a deck of cards. There are no indicator lights on it, but it does include screws and a mounting template if you want to wall mount it. If you have not decided yet, you can go to their website and play with a demo version of the system, which is nice. It has the following reports: * Highlights. This shows a bar chart with recent power usage per hour, a meter that shows current usage (and is very responsive), today's total usage, today's projected total usage, a comparison to last month, the minimum and maximum amount of power used, the current rate (if you entered it into the setup, such as a tiered rate like I have), your estimated bill to date, and an estimate for your total bill. The best part about the Highlights is that the meter is VERY RESPONSIVE. I can watch the needle move up and down in near real-time. I can see when the stove is turned on, then watch as it cycles the burner on/off to maintain heat. It also shows a +/- designation that shows how much more/less power is being used presently compared to the last time the needle moved. For example, right now it shows -25w after a fan was turned off. If something else turns on, it would show +[number] to indicate the difference. * Insights. This shows your usage compared to other forms of power, such as gas, coal, natural gas, etc. I don't find this very useful. * Live. This shows a very detailed chart of minute-by-minute power usage. * Summary. This shows a bar chart with hourly totals of power usage. * Comparison. This shows a comparison of power used to the previous month on a daily basis. * Bills. This shows a 12 month billing history, daily cost, daily average cost, consumption per tier, and so forth. * Reports. This shows a weekly report of usage compared to previous weeks. * Phantom energy. This shows your minimum usage demand, and helps you track down low-use devices that cost you money while they are supposedly turned off. * What's it cost. This is a usage calculator that allows you to pick from a wide range of devices to determine how much they cost you to operate. * Net meter. If you have solar, or some other supplemental power supply system, this will tell you how much power you have generated versus how much you have used. The mobile website has all of these features as well, and has a really well done "swipe" design that allows you to swipe left/right across multiple screens per area. The site also has a variety of setup options, including a "rates" feature. This allows you to enter your rates from the power company, in one of three ways: * Fixed Price * Tiered * Time of Use You can also specify if you are billed: * Monthly * Bi-monthly * Quarterly Finally, you can also tell it that you have the following fees/charges: * Fixed fees * Variable (per kWh) fees * Adjustment factor * Taxes * Rebates My only complaints: You have to login to the website almost every time you visit, even if it's only been an hour or two. On the mobile site this often results in a box saying "error" and it never goes away, so you cannot login. You have to close the tab/browser, or restart your phone to get back in. (I have reported this issue to them as of 5/10/2015 so hopefully they will fix this.) It's just a little hassle to have to login each time. (SEE PHOTOS) In addition, the "Dial" meter is inconsistent. Some times it has the needle in the red zone for (example) 4 kWh, and then later it will have the 4 kWh in the yellow zone. It's not labelled either, and it should be. (SEE PHOTOS) All in all I really like it. This is exactly what I have been looking for, it's cheap, easy to use, and has really helped me understand what the energy hogs in my house are (hint: it's my HVAC). Finally, I got mine as an Amazon Warehouse Deal, for only $75! The box was very beat up, but the device was perfect and works great. Save yourself a few bucks if you can!

This works great. There are multiple ways to analyze live and historic data. The graphs are very useful in tracking down or simply watching energy use. You have choices to view estimated bills, monthly/weekly/daily/hourly consumption, weekly reports, live consumption (15 mins to 24 hour graph), vampire (phantom) energy draw, and more. This can be viewed on any computer, or any phone within a browser. There is not a dedicated app, but the mobile website works just fine. The mobile site lacks a few features and settings (basically is simplified with larger fonts) from the full site, but you can tell your phone browser to "view desktop site" if you want to. It has been very helpful in seeing why my bills were so high and helped to figure out how to reduce the bill. One of the things that became apparent was the taxes and fees are almost 50% of the bill! I have reduced the bill by well over $60 a month so far by making a few changes. I was surprised the dryer was such an energy hog, so I bought a clothes line and saved a bunch of money during the summer months. I was able to justify putting in a new heat pump water heater that saves about $40 a month in electricity and will pay for itself in about two years by seeing what my old water heater electricity consumption was. Installation was easy, but if you are not familiar with high voltage precautions you need to research them or hire a professional who can safely install this for you. This is a particularly dangerous part of the circuit breaker panel because the pickups for this device go before the main breaker where you can't shut power off so it is always live. The pickups just click over each incoming hot wire so nothing to disconnect electrically. Other than that, connect the pickups into the transmitter, plug the receiver into an open ethernet port somewhere in the house, and set up your account on the Eyedro website. The one thing that this device does not do is tell you which device is on by name. You can watch and figure out which devices are on if you watch long enough, in my case a couple days of casual monitoring. Things like the furnace, refrigerators, TV, coffee pot, and many other things are pretty easy to see because they have a unique signature when they turn on and off. Some things like lights are a little harder to tell which light is on, but you can still tell there is one on. From what I gather, the more expensive "smart" systems aren't much better at this at a much higher cost. The monitoring is internet based, and that part works fine. It would be nice to have direct local monitoring an not have to rely on the cloud, but that is not the way most things work nowadays. I am less worried about this company than some of the startup electrical monitoring companies, but I am always concerned about what happens if a company decides to discontinue supporting a device.

I bought this meter to monitor my power usage and determine what size of generator to buy for my house. For this purpose this device seems to be well suited and meets my needs. See lists below of specific items below related to my experience with this product. Pros: -Arrived fast -Easy to setup -Inexpensive compared to other options out there -Current transformers (CT's) unhinge so you can get them around the cables. -Phone app is handy and it is cool to see how much power your house uses at all times of the day -Included instructions were simple and easy to follow. -Information updates almost in realtime to the website which makes it possible to view the changing load as you turn devices on and off Cons: -Receiver unit only uploads the data directly with the Eyedro website through your internet connection, meaning if they company ever goes out of business or stops supporting this product then you can no longer use the product at all as there is no local readout or way to extract the metering data without accessing their website. (Note: Their website says they have been in business since 2009 so they have been around awhile and this may not be a big concern) -The data you can view, including the format, granularity, timescale, etc is limited on their website and there does not appear to be a way to customize it beyond the few standard options. EDIT: They have a feature on the web interface where you can export the data to a .CSV file which allows you to customize it beyond what is available on the website. This is useful to look at max, min and average usage over a longer timescale. -There are no Potential transformers (PT's) included with this kit, the units appear to calculate power consumption based on the current (Amps) the CT's sense and the voltage that you input for your system on their website during the initial setup process. This is fine as long as you realize the inherent limitations of this approach. Actual voltage and nominal voltage are not the same and actual voltage can vary throughout the day based on a variety of factors. If for example during the setup process you input your systems voltage as 120V but at a given time the actual voltage was say 109V or 130V this will effect the accuracy of your load calculations.

I'm very happy with the eyedro. I bought the wired version, and had to snake an ethernet cable from the router to the basement, but I've heard from their support team that the wireless version works fine in houses (signal can go through walls, multiple floors, etc). I would recommend going wireless to save you the trouble of drilling holes in floors, and running 100' of ethernet, running ethernet through conduits, and stapling the cable to basement ceiling walls. It took me about 2 minutes to install the eyedro, but 2 hours to run an ethernet cable, go wireless. What I love about the eyedro, is that I can see how much energy the house is using in real time. I can walk around the house turning things on and off, and my phone shows the difference a second later. So, this turns saving energy into a game. Before bed, when I'm checking that all the doors are locked, I also pull up the Eyedro current usage meter on my phone, and check that we're only using the baseline, which is about 200 watts. If its higher than that, that means I've left something on: lights / monitors / computer in the office, lights in the basement. Also, I've been replacing all the lights in the house from incandescents to LEDs, this is a huge and easy was to reducing energy usage. (I buy my lights from IKEA, very well priced). Next, I'm also hunting the house, to try to find "phantom energy" users. i.e. things that draw a load, even though your not really using it, think stereo, vcr, tv, coffee maker. Overnight, my house used a minimum of 170 watts, meaning, once the furnace fan turned off, and the refrigerator took a break, and all the lights were off, things in the house that I'm not using still pulled that much energy. 170 watts of phantom energy, costs about $160/yr at my energy rate, and the eyedro dashboard gives you all of this information in real time reports. You can view the eyedro dashboard from your laptop, or from your phone. It's not a native mobile app, but a mobile website, it works fine. There are a dozen or so reports or dashboards. It gives numbers and graphs, not at all complicated to figure out meaningful events. (i.e. this spike is probably the furnace fan kicking on, this spike is probably the microwave, this spike is the vacuum, this is the lights in this room turning on/off, this the tv). Also, we took a trip, and I logged in to see how much energy we were using, and we must have left in a hurry, because the house was using 900 watts baseline, oops. If your online gone for a few hours, thats 700 watts extra * 10 hours = 7kw * $0.10/kwh = $0.70 that you paid for nothing, so no big deal if your gone for a short duration, but if you were away for a week, with all that on, then oops. I'm considering adding smart light switches and outlets, that I can turn off remotely. I'm thinking Lutron Caseta for the lights, and Belkin wemo for the outlets. I'm not how long the ROI, from those things would take, but personally, I'd like to save energy. Also, when using energy, is something is a very short duration usage, such as a vacuum for 5 minutes, or a sander for 20 minutes, that doesn't cost much energy in the grand scheme, but things that are always running, such as lights, fridge, furnace fan, office, that's where you'll want to pay attention to usage. The next thing I have planned for eyedro, is to take a look at how much energy my appliances are using. I could see how much energy the coffee maker uses, the refrigerator uses. Eyedro doesn't have the ability to single out individual appliances, it just measures the whole-house, but, at 8am I started the coffee machine, and it used energy for 2 hours. The refrigerator has all of these cycles, that is pretty much continuous throughout the day. So, I could compare them to newer models that use less energy. Maybe, just pour my coffee into a carafe, or get maker that brews it into a carafe, and then turns off. Down the road, I'd like to add a solar panel electric system to the house, maybe. Before then, I'd like the house to be efficient with usage, so that I won't have to buy as expensive of a system, and eyedro is helping me to steer that direction. Also, I was having issues with our internet, and since the eyedro is always uploading data to the cloud, whenever the internet would drop, I got emails that eyedro lost connectivity. Thus, I had data to tell my ISP that the internet had been flaky, and they replaced the modem. Conclusion: Its a nice toy to show off to others, but it gives you data, that helps you to take action to reduce your usage, to ultimately reduce your electricity bill. Its not just turn off the lights because I said so, but this light is using this much energy, and this is how much its costing us per hour. Lastly, if I were to buy this again, I would spring for the wireless version, save yourself the hassle of running a cable to your basement.

2017-04-24 I ordered the Eyedro EHEM1 Home Electricity Monitor last September and have had it installed for six months, so this review will cover my observations for the six month period. The Eyedro EHEM1 Home Electricity Monitor was purchased to replace a E-matic whole house electricity monitor which sh!t the bed and died. Pros: It worked most of the time. No batteries in the transmitter. Cons: Transmitter requires a standard AC outlet near the service panel. Probably the biggest negative “feature” is that it uses a proprietary internet protocol to connect to the Eyedro servers in Canada, therefore there are many points of failure from the sending transmitter unit to finally having information displayed on your web browser screen. Any fault will break the chain and you receive no data. Just had two days of zero. This brings up a privacy issue as well, who knows what other data are collected and reported? There is no web interface into the transmitter and no easy way to configure a static IP. A static IP address for the Eyedro must be set using the Eyedro MAC address in the router that it is connected to. The induction clamps are a little on the large size and hard to install in the circuit breaker panel. They are installed ahead of the main breakers on the service feed from the electric utility company, so high voltage is always present. Because the line feeds are commonly the first wires connected to the panel they are behind most of the other wire coming off the circuit breakers. I also noted upon install, with the induction clamps not plugged in, the display was showing about 16 – 20 Watts draw on each phase. I believe the accuracy of the unit is probably in that range because it does not register LED or CFL light bulbs, nor does it show current draw from ceiling fans and small motors. If you have solar panels installed the Eydro is pretty much useless unless you buy a second unit to install on the solar panel feed line. Expense, Pros, and Cons times two. Another problem I found is, at night I turn off all unnecessary electronic devices to prevent phantom loads, although the Eyedro transmitter remains plugged in overnight, when the router is turned on in the morning, the transmitter will often fail to reconnect to the servers and I must go the electrical panel to unplug and replug the transmitter unit to get it to connect to their server. Bottom line, when it works, it is OK. Many little problems to contend with make it a pain in the A$$. Update 2017-04-30: Reduce to one star because there is no zero star. More zero output to web browser. USELESS!

I've had this unit installed, a little less than 48 hours so far and I can already tell that this is an amazingly well designed product that I will enjoy using for years to come!!! Device Installation: I only have 50A service to my house (it's an old house). I bought 60A CTs. 200A CTs it comes with are pretty huge. The 60A CTs are itty bitty and EASILY fit into my house's ancient cutoff switch! Installation was a breeze. CT wires are super super long too so it aids in the ease of installation! Device Setup: Super easy. Connect and web into the eyedro device, add your wifi details, and done! Web account: Make an account and then enter serial number printed on the device on the website, and done! You can even reverse the CT direction on the site in case you installed one backwards (like I did!) BRILLIANT! Why that reversal feature isn't in all of these devices boggles my mind... API: RESTful API. Simple, easy, effective. Wanna know the best part? YOU CAN QUERY THE DEVICE ITSELF! If for some reason Eyedro goes out of business, you aren't left with a useless piece of electronic that tries to phone home and stops working when it can't see the Eyedro servers. You can either use a third party application or write your own (like I did) to query the device and display the relevant info where you need it! (like on my MagicMirror screen) Web interface: This interface is gorgeous. I come from efergy which is absolute trash. Eyedro gives you all the data you need, and even splits up your CTs on a beautiful, fast updating graph. It is difficult for me to overstate how much I love the interface on this website. It's relatively clean, TONS of information, and they're all in relatively intuitive areas. Let's face it.. if you're interested in installing whole house power monitoring, you're probably a nerd. This web interface gives you the numbers and stats you want to mega nerd out. Conclusion: Want an easy to use API for your own devices (my main use case)? BUY IT Want to customize the CTs you stick inside your electrical boxes for more accuracy and space limitations? BUY IT Want a clean and beautiful web interface with TONS of numbers? BUY IT Want to use this device well after the company Eyedro has died? BUY IT dOn't cARe AbOuT pOwEr mONItoRiNG? Why are you reading this review???

The EYEFI-2 overall is okay for the cost @ $159, but the software could use improvement and the online technical support (manual and how-to videos) is marginal at best. First off, it's super easy to install. The sensors connect to the mains inside your breaker box. You can kill power to your box if you'd like before you take the front cover off, but provided you don't grab an exposed terminal you're not likely to electrocute yourself. In my case, I opened one of the unused conduit holes on the bottom of my box to run the sensor wires out to the EYEFI controller. Install was under 10 minutes. The controller itself is also pretty easy to set up, but I found I needed to set up the WiFi before connecting the sensors to the controller. Just plug the controller into an outlet, use your phone to connect to the EYEFI and change its network settings, and that's it. I used '192.168.1.1/network' to access the EYEFI and set the network settings to connect with my router (router network name and password). There is no documentation that comes with the device, save for a single-sheet "quick setup" that is pretty sparse on detail, but it wasn't rocket science so 4 stars there. The 3 star rating is mostly due to the software. The EYEFI pushes everything to the cloud and you use a Web browser to access your account. That makes the whole thing seem a bit sluggish. The data is not presented in a comprehensive manner, and the online documentation is pretty sparse. There are settings and options that are not documented, and a lot of the features (like net metering) are just glossed over. This is probably the weakest aspect of the product, the lackluster software. The "mobile app" is even worse; a lot of the mobile features simply don't work. Had I known how disappointing the software would be, or how minimal the software would be, I would have likely kept looking for other options. Yes, the price is good, but I would not recommend this product.

I'm not sure I've ever reviewed a product before, but I feel compelled. If you're looking for something short, look elsewhere. We're getting a home backup generator. Our electrician seems to be upselling us from a 10kWt unit to a 20kWt unit. I think we can get by with the smaller one, but I wanted to make sure that we wouldn't make a $5K mistake to avoid a $2K one, so I bought one of these things. I'm no electrician and I wouldn't call myself particularly handy, but I am cheap and reckless, so even seeing the manual saying that I could kill myself by trying to install it myself, I said, "What the heck." I also bought a wireless client (Satechi-Wireless-300Mbps-Multifunction-Repeater from Amazon) since I don't have a Ethernet port near my breaker box. That was cheaper than buying the wireless version and I wanted to see how that thing worked, too. The reviews made some complaints about packaging. Everything seemed to arrive intact, but one of the two sensors rattled a little if shook. Anyway, I unscrewed the breaker panel and discovered the main shutoff (never knew that existed). I drilled a couple of holes in the panel to run the wires from the sensors through. That was a mess because I didn't have the right size or type of bit. I won't embarrass myself by telling you I used a countersink widen the hole to a sufficient diameter. Saturday morning, I powered down the house at the main shutoff. Then I put on some insulated gloves, told my family I loved them, and installed the sensors. That was really easy and I didn't die! I then set up the base Eyedro unit and the wireless client. That was about three minutes. The biggest obstacle was my illiteracy with the wireless client manual where I typed "password" rather than "admin" a couple of times before figuring out what I was doing wrong. I also had to set up a my.Eyedro account and register the device, which was largely trivial. Then I took the setup downstairs, plugged everything in again and bingo, I was getting readings at my.Eyedro.com right away. Super exciting. Now for the problems. Like I said, I'm not an electrician. One thing you have to do is set the line voltage for each sensor at my.Eyedro.com. The manual says 120V for most North American applications, but I know I have 220V appliances and my meter outside says 240V, so I figured I'd use 240V. After running for a day, the meter and my Eyedro didn't match, so I tried writing their support, but I think it must have crashed or something, because I never heard back from that inquiry (more on that in a minute). Then I had to go to work and didn't look at things for a week. On Tuesday, I tried writing Eyedro again via their web form and got a reply within a couple of hours. I asked if I should have voltage set at 120 or 240 and what the consequence was if I set it incorrectly. The answer was 120 and if I set it to 240 my readings would be twice as high (Power = Voltage * Amperage; the sensors report amperage). I think this explains the breakers with one lever and two breakers. Those are my 220V circuits with each breaker 110V in parallel; that's why each breaker is the same amperage (some real electrician can confirm or call me out as the idiot I am). The Eyedro support person even invited me to send a picture of my setup to confirm everything. I haven't done that yet, but I might. Right now I have other issues. I also went back and forth on a couple of other things (even a little chit-chat) and the support was incredibly responsive. When I looked at my.Eyedro.com Saturday evening, a week after initial installation, I noticed I hadn't had any readings since Sunday. I did a bunch of testing and concluded that either the Eyedro base or the Eyedro power supply were bad since the tiny internal LED was not holding green reliably (not documented in the manual). I contacted support through my existing email thread and had to wait until Monday for a reply (I think they must close on weekends). Again, very quick response during regular business hours and the promise of a replacement device and power supply. No fuss at all. It has already shipped and should arrive by end of the week. Of course I'm disappointed the device failed, but the quality and responsiveness of support more than makes up for it. Hey, things break. It's nice to know someone is there to help when that happens. Also, their web interface is very easy to navigate through. The only minor complaint I have is that you need to click a Done button sometimes to navigate to another page on the site.