Remote mounting IoTaWatt from electric panel

I’m considering mounting my IoTaWatt about 50 ft from my electric panel. My electric panel is located at the back of the garage at the back of the house. I’ve seen that others have used CAT 5 cable between the CTs and the IoTaWatt. Is there a wiring limit distance between the CTs and the IoTaWatt?

I’m familiar with running cables in Oil Refineries where we used twisted / shielded pairs in muli-core cables for the 4 to 20 ma DC analogue control signals. Do the twisted pairs from the CTs need to be shielded?

All the electric cables go from the panel thru the garage attic, thru a breezeway into the house. How close can the CT extension cables be run parallel to 120 / 240 VAC house wiring? The wiring is not in conduit, just bare “ROMEX” cable… The 220 VAC cables provide power to AC compressor, OVEN, the close dryer, etc.

Should I use EMT to shield the four (4) CAT 5 extension cables as they pass parallel with the 120/240 cables? It is basically a straight run so it would be easy to implement.

Thanks

Why do that ? Why wouldn’t you just connect to your wifi and leave the IOTAWATT out near the panel ?

If WIFI is weak out there it would be cheaper/easier to buy a cheap router/WIFI AP and connect it over a premade ethernet cable to extend your WIFI out to the garage.

I use these units around the outside of the house to extend/create my IOT network

Dirt cheap and a breeze to setup

Buy a cheap 25 metre CAT 6 premade cable and away you go

Craig

With long extensions, my advice is always to try it and see. EMT can’t hurt, but might work without.

As. @craigcurtin suggests, makes more sense to run a single CAT6 to the garage and install a cheap AP. Ethernet uses transformers at each end to effectively cancel any noise picked up by the twisted pair, much like balanced line microphones eliminate hum.

Thanks for the quick response and recommendations. Extending the wifi is probably the easiest. Is 300Mbps sufficient for the IoTaWatt?

IoTaWatt doesn’t need much. I doubt you could be too slow.

Yep more than enough - my IOTAWATT ambles along at about 10Kbs (and thats pumping out to EMONCMS) and querying it every 10 seconds with the API

Those little Mango routers are great (i have 6 of them) - just load the latest OpenWRT firmware on them when you get them and you are set

Craig

Oh, nice…thanks for the suggestion about the GL.iNET unit!

I have a rather large junction box that my IoTaWatt lives in (12h"x12"wx6"d). Anyone know if the IoTaWatt and the GL.iNET unit in that same volume would work effectively, or would they be too close?

You would have to check it - but i have my IOTAWATT rigth next to my GL iNET unit (like 6 inches hanging in free space) and it has not presented any issues

You can through the Web interface of the GL iNET actually turn down the WIFI strength if required.

Craig

Thanks for the empirical evidence and the GL iNET feature of adjusting the wireless power. For ~US$20, it would be rude not to give it a try…

Craig, I got a GL.iNET unit about 6 weeks ago and I am finally trying to set it up.

I went thru the GL.iNet Repeater setup procedure, joined my existing WIFI network and now it does not respond. I get a time out error on anything I try to do. I’ve tried pushing the reset button (both the 3 second and 10 second resets) and still no response. I get nothing when I enter http://192.168.8.1. Any ideas on what I need to do?

You mentioned “just load the latest OpenWRT firmware on them”. How would I do that?

Thanks for your help. I wish I had IoTaWatt installed before the deep freeze event in Houston. It would have been helpful in balancing the 2 power legs while on backup generator.

@craigcurtin & @zipzap I have installed a GL iNET mini router and connected my IotaWatt to it, but I can not open IotaWatt from my home network. How do I configure the GLiNET (mango) unit?

I have another post with more information:
problem-connecting-to-iotawatt-thru-a-network-repeater

Any help and guidance is appreciated.

larry

Replied in the other thread, which is directly dealing with the network problems of the GL-iNET device. (This doesn’t seem like an IoTaWatt problem.)

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Just realized I never cross-posted back here with my final installation (including the GL-iNET Mango recommended by @craigcurtain).

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