eGauge Firmware Release Notes

v1.05.2

Maintenance release.

v1.05

• When renaming a register in Settings→Installation, the Totals and Virtual Registers using that register were incorrectly reset to the first register in the list. This bug has been fixed.
• On devices with expanded memory, there was a corner case which could cause the device to reboot under certain circumstances. This bug has been fixed.

v1.04

• Increase limit that made it impossible to configure lots of registers with long names. This limitation only affected devices with expanded memory.
• Fix a buglet that caused IE9 to reboot a device only once, due to aggressive caching.
• Fix a bug that caused the data of subtype registers (e.g., positive-only registers) to be corrupted when adding any other register.

v1.03

• Fix mishandling of remote devices that have no registers.

v1.02

• Tweak scaling policy to make the new dashboard work better on low-resolution wide-screen computers (like netbooks). Specifically, instead of scaling the dashboard to always fit the width of the screen, it now fills the screen to fit the entire graph and (some of) the legend.

v1.01

• Fix a buglet that caused the Settings→HomePlug screen not to work properly.

v1.00

• Updated Look The updated look provides an indication of which power- and time-zoom level has been selected, among many other things. All graph-specific operations are now grouped into a single graph-menu in the top-left corner of the graph, replacing the "->CSV" button. Specifically, this menu allows to set the date range to be displayed in the graph, export to a spreadsheet program, and select a non-default view.
• Default settings for graph It is now possible to customize the default time-zoom and power-zoom used when loading the graph on the main page. This can be done via Settings->Preferences and also through query paramters ("t" sets the time-zoom in minutes, "p" the power-zoom in Watts). It's now also possible to specify additional registers that should be displayed by default in the graph. The register-list to be displayed can be passed via query-parameter "r", or can be set via the corresponding Preference entry.
• Data Summary in Graph When pressing the Control key while moving the mouse pointer over the graph or "Current" gauge, eGauge now displays a summary of all registers for the point under the mouse. Also, when dragging an area of the graph while pressing the Control key, eGauge will highlight the dragged area. Upon releasing the mouse button, a popup-window is displayed that gives a summary of the data for the dragged area.
• Time-navigation buttons There are now four clickable buttons below the graph which allow to navigate through the recorded data page by page, move to the very beginning of recorded data, or move the to the very end of recorded data.
• Site Password It is now possible to establish a site-password (Settings→Password). With a site-password, any access to the device will require authentication with username user and the established site-password (alternatively, you can also authenticate yourself with username owner and the owner-password). Devices which have a site-password established are not listed at http://www.egauge.net/devices/.
• Remote Devices It is now possible to have eGauge read data from another device. At this time, data can be read from other eGauges, from Power-One Aurora inverters (via an Ethernet-to-RS485 adapter), and from the Alpha-Innotec Luxtronik 2 heat-pump controller. Support for other select devices will follow.
• Recording of non-power data In addition to recording net real-power data, eGauge now also can record the following quantities:
  • Positive-only real power (+). Such registers will only advance when the measured power is positive.
  • Negative-only real power (-). Such registers will only advance when the measured power is negative.
  • Absolute value of real power (|). Such registers will advance both when the measured power is negative or positive (i.e., the direction in which the power flows is ignored).
  • Apparent power (*). Such registers record the absolute value of the apparent power (the product of the RMS voltage and RMS current).
  • Current (I) measured by any of the CTs.
  • Voltage (V) measured at any of the voltage-taps (L1-L3).
  • Frequency (F) measured at any of the voltage-taps (L1-L3).
  For any of these quantities, eGauge records the average value for each interval. The eGauge main unit has space for up to 12 registers. As the device is being configured, the Settings→Installation page now displays how many registers are in use and how many are available for use.
• Virtual Registers The "totaling" section in the Settings→Installation has been enhanced to allow for defining additional arbitrary virtual registers. A virtual register represents an arbitrary sum or difference of other (physical) registers.
• Potential Transformers It is now possible to configure the voltage scaling factors of L1, L2, and L3. This is useful when the voltages at those pins have been transformed down with a potential transformer.
• Hostname and DNS Masquerading When changing a hostname (Settings→Network Settings→Hostname), the new name is now also reflected in the DHCP table so that DHCP-based DNS maquerading will find the device under the new name.

v0.86.2

• Fix slow rendering of partially invisible dashed line on browsers using HTML5 Canvas for graphics (e.g., Chrome).
• Fix channel checker to allow displaying of more than 12 power components.

v0.86.1

• Reset HomePlug chip once every 24 hours to guard against potential connectivity-loss.

v0.86

• Add IE9 support.
• Minor skin updates.

v0.85.9

• Fix "Hour" vs "Hours" typo in Kiosk page.
• Minor skin update.

v0.85.8

• Added new skin.

v0.85.7

• Minor tweak: rename "Trees planted" to "Trees grown" on Lightgauge skin.

v0.85.6

• Added 15A CT.
• Added new skin.

v0.85.5

• Fix a bug that caused display_history.html not to display anything unless a "reg=" query parameter was specified.

v0.85.4

• Fix a bug that was introduced in 0.85 that kept a device from re-acquiring IP info via DHCP once it failed.

v0.85.2

• Make hourly and daily CSV exports work reliably and more intuitively.
• When viewing a register (not a total) in the "Stats" monthly statistics page, clicking on a number on that page now brings up a graph showing just that register.

v0.85.1

• CSV exports are now done in the browser's time-zone. This makes the date/time in a CSV file consistent with the date/time displayed in the browser's graph, etc.

v0.85

• Fix a buglet that prevented the "Current" label from showing under the "currange usage/production" gauge.
• New Settings->Preferences dialog allows the setting of a descriptive page-title for the main page.
• Google Chrome browser now defaults to using Canvas rather than SVG to avoid rendering bugs in Chrome's SVG implementation.
• Fix a bug in the web-servers CGI-handler which had the effect that occasionally a CGI connection wasn't closed properly, causing the client to hang.

v0.84.7

• Add support for 1000A CT.

v0.84.6

• Make the background color of the Kiosk body white (rather than undefined).

v0.84.5

• Tweak Kiosk to make it adjust to any screen size.

v0.84.4

• Minor skin update.

v0.84.3

• On eGauge2 hardware, enabled ECC correction in the primary bootstrap loader.
• The "Status" page now displays the hardware model and the kernel version.

v0.84.2

• Add support for 5A and 20A CTs.

v0.84.1

• Fix a bug that caused the channel-checker not to display the currents and voltages.

v0.84

• Added basic support for BACnet/IP and BACnet/Ethernet.
• Revised the export CSV functionality to output average power by default (with an option to export energy readings, like before). Also replace "Use" and "Gen" formulas with computed values to avoid problems with different spreadsheets using different operand separators.
• Fixed accidental reversal of the date and time fields in the Date and Time picker widget.

v0.83.5

• Fix a typo that caused an "Error on page" error when rebooting a device through Internet Explorer.
• Improve Google Power Meter handling of device de-activation and re-activation.

v0.83.4

• Add a means to the "Status" page to (securely) lookup the MAC address, which is needed for online warranty registration.

v0.83.3

• Fix typos on GPM page which caused Firefox to croak.
• In the calendar popups, the week now starts with Sunday, by popular request.

v0.83.2

Bug fix:

• Improve IE8 support a little. This makes, for example, GPM deactivation work without complaints.

v0.83.1

Bug fix:

• Plug resource-leak in Google PowerMeter daemon.

v0.83

New features:

• Added Google PowerMeter support for eGauge2 hardware. Not available on eGauge1 hardware due to limited storage space.

v0.82.1

Bug fixes:

• Properly report when setting the HomePlug encryption password fails.
• Properly handle empty (unknown) vendor names.

v0.82

Improvements:

• On Windows-based computers, it is now possible to access eGauge directly through its device name, without having to first install any additional software. For example, eGauge539 can now be accessed as http://egauge539/ as long as the device is in the same LAN-broadcast domain as the computer.
• Add HomePlug settings screen. This provides a means to see what the individual communication speeds to each HomePlug device are and to set a non-default encryption password. Please be sure to read the Help info on this topic before using this feature!
• On model eGauge2 devices, the Status LED now alternates between green/magenta or blue/magenta if the device is configured to use DHCP but the device was unable to obtain DHCP information (such as an IP address). If unable to obtain the DHCP info, the device will blink green/magenta when the HomePlug link speed is above 2Mbps and blue/magenta otherwise.

v0.81.1

Improvement:

• Add the ability to install test-releases of the firmware.

v0.81

Bug fix:

• Fix a bug that was introduced by the blinking Status LED which had the effect that the proxy-connection would go seemingly dead after the device ran for some time.

v0.80

Improvements:

• Added an Internet-Explorer workaround which has a bug that had the effect of creating pop-ups with the message "No XML elements". This issue appears to be limited to IE8 as shipped on Windows 7 (IE release 8.0.7600.16385).
• Android-based devices such as the Google Phone (gPhone) are now supported. To be precise, this release adds support for any browser that supports the canvas element as defined by the HTML5 standard (including the text-method fillText). Browsers that also support SVG will continue to use SVG.
• What used to be called "Source" in Settings->Installation is now called "Register". The name "Source" was confusing when it was used for loads, such as pumps or ovens.
• The "Statistics" page ("Stats" link) can now display monthly summaries for any register, in addition to the summaries for the totals (Usage, Generation, and Net Usage).
• The "Statistics" page ("Stats" link) has been enhanced such that clicking on any monthly value displays a usage/production graph for that month. Similarly, clicking on any annual value displays the usage/production graph for that year.
• The Status LED now blinks when the device is connected to the proxy-server. If the speed of the HomePlug-link is at least 5Mbps, the LED will blink green, otherwise it will blink blue.
• The reboot page has been enhanced such that it attempts to automatically detect when the device has come back from the reboot. The only time the automatic detection may not work is when the device's IP address or name changes because the of the web-browser's same-origin security policy.
• It is now possible to use arbitrary ASCII/UTF-8 symbols in register-names. Previously, using certain punctuation marks such as /-characters would cause problems.

v0.79

Bug fix:

• This release fixes a bug where in certain environments, a temporary networking failure could lead to a device being unable to connect to the proxy-server (d.egauge.net) even after the networking failure was fixed.

v0.78

Bug fix:

• The fix in v0.59 broke daylight-savings-time again. This should be fixed for good now and should work correctly for leap-seconds and daylight-savings time and whatever else you can throw at it...

v0.77

Bug fixes:

• Fix a bug that could cause incorrect energy delta being displayed in the time range and/or the "Statistics" page. Oops.
• Fix a misfeature which caused bogus data to be displayed on the "Statistics" page if the epoch was within the current year.

v0.76

Improvements:

• A password-reset feature has been added to the "Settings->Password" menu. When resetting the password, remote-administration will also be disabled, since it would be unsafe to allow remote administration with the default password.
• The "Upgrade" link has been replaced with a "Tools" menu. This menu provides access to a data backup and restore facility, a facility to zero out data-spikes. It also provides utilities to reboot the device, upgrade the firmware, and display instantaneous channel-, power-, and power-factor values.
• This release adds support for finding a a local eGauge device via mDNS. In practical terms, this means that you'll be able to access your device with URL http://DEVNAME.local, where DEVNAME is the device-name, such as eGauge1. In other words: no need to remember or bookmark the IP address of the device anymore! This works out-of-the-box on Mac OS X and Linux machines. On Windows machines, it's generally necessary to first download and install Bonjour for Windows. It's a small (<3MiB) and painless install, so we recommend it.
• On eGauge2 hardware, settings can now be changed with username "owner". The default-password for this username is "default". The password can be changed through Settings->Password. On this tab, it is also possible to enable remote administration. Needless to say, remote-administration should be enabled only after changing the default-password to a strong and secret password.

Bug fixes:

• A bug has been fixed which with certain inverters caused small power usage to appear as a small production.
• A bug has been fixed that prevented CSV-export to work on certain configurations.
• A work-around for Internet Explorer v8 (IE8) has been implemented which prevents errors when incomplete responses are received over the network.

v0.75

Bug fixes:

• The energy summary displayed after the "Time range" indicator used to show duplicate (and potentially) conflicting energy units such as "kWh kWh". This bug has been fixed in this release.

v0.74

Improvements:

• The energy-data can now be exported to a spread-sheet program by clicking on the "->CSV" button in the top-left of the graph on the device's home page.
• Date and time entry fields commonly used by users now pop up a calendar or hour-picker window, respectively, for simplified entry. Also, the time fields now accept time in 24-hour format (e.g., "18:00" instead of "6pm").
• The "Time zoom" list, now has additional entries for 6 months (6m), 3 months (3m), 3 weeks (3w), 2 weeks (2w), 6 hours (6h) and 3 hours (3h).
• Input and select elements are now again rendered in the browser's default-style.

Bug fixes:

• On eGauge2 hardware, make DHCP lookup more reliable. Formerly, if the device was unable to obtain an IP address via DHCP, it would permanently fall back to 192.168.1.88. Now, it will periodically retry to obtain a DHCP address, which is the Right Thing To Do and matches the behavior on the eGauge1 hardware.

v0.73

Improvements:

• On eGauge2 hardware, display the reason for the most recent reboot on the "Status" page.
• Add 150A CTs and tweak 50A CT in Settings->Installation.

Bug fixes:

• On eGauge2 hardware, make DHCP lookup more reliable. Formerly, if the device was unable to obtain an IP address via DHCP, it would permanently fall back to 192.168.1.88. Now, it will periodically retry to obtain a DHCP address, which is the Right Thing To Do and matches the behavior on the eGauge1 hardware.

v0.72

Bug fixes:

• Fix many Internet Explorer rendering issues.
• Correct some energy-calculations.

v0.71

Bug fixes:

• Fix a bug that could cause the "Totaling" formulas (Settings->Installation) to be wiped out when changing other settings.
• Fix LED handling so it switches back to blue if HomePlug speed drops below 5Mbps.
• Fix LED handling so overtemperature is displayed as blinking red.

v0.70

Internal release only.

v0.69

Improvements:

• The CT configuration is now completely web-configurable via Settings->Installation. This is not (yet) supported in Internet Explorer. Opera, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome browsers all handle it fine. Take your pick.
• The date and time of the device can now be checked and, if necessary, changed via Settings->Date & Time.

v0.68

Improvements:

• Switch to using floating-point rather than fixed-point arithmetic. This used to be too slow in eGauge1, but with a little trick, it's now fast enough on eGauge1 and actually 10% faster on eGauge2. A nice side-effect is that accuracy should improve significantly on installations with CTs with large current ratings (e.g., 600A).
• Add support for measuring pure 208/240V inverters (or loads) with a single CT.

v0.67

This version was internal only and was never released.

v0.66

Bug fixes:

• A bug was fixed that caused artificial "ripples" in the power curves at intervals of about every 5-8 minutes.
• A bug was fixed that could cause incoherent data to be displayed in the "Current" gauge.

v0.65

New Features:

• The proxy-client now assumes the proxy-connection is dead if it hasn't received anything from the server in the last 5 minutes. This should improve reliability of the proxy-connection.

v0.64

Bug fixes:

• Fix a bug in the Kiosk where the rabbit/snail speed of usage and generation was flipped.

v0.63

Bug fixes:

• Update Kiosk to use mapping formulas, like the other web pages.

v0.62

New Features:

• The "Stats" page now displays the HomePlug transmit speed.

Bug fixes:

• Fix a bug that could cause the red LED to stay on permanently even after an overtemperature situation has been resolved.

v0.61

Bug fix

• Fix handling of negative temperatures in the "Stats" page.
• In "Settings->General Settings->address lookup", use batchgeocode.com instead of maporama.com to translate an address to latitude/longitude coordinates. The latter doesn't seem to work anymore.

v0.60

Bug fix

• Make "Stats" link work again by distributing Int64.cjs as a stand-alone file (rather than as part of EGauge.cjs).

v0.59

New feature:

• The formulas used to map the individual power components to total usage/generation figures is now configurable in the "Settings" menu ("Mapping formula 1/2"). Read the Help page for details on the format of these formulas.

Bug fix

• The daylight-savings-time fix from Nov 2nd (v0.56) broke some of the time labels. For example, when displaying 31 days worth of data in the graph, the day-of-month labels were missing. This has been fixed now (while still keeping the DST-switch fix in place).
• On Internet Explorer, selecting a time-zoom of 31 days now properly displays the day-of-month labels (this has been working all along with other browsers, such as Firefox).
• Fix bugs that showed up when fetching data that crosses a resolution-boundary (affects eGauges with at least 1 year worth of data; note that the data is recorded properly, the bugs affected only the display/rendering of the data).

v0.58

Bug fix

• Fix some Opera and Safari rendering issues on the "Stats" page. Also, work around IE7 issues which caused it to fail on this page. The page still doesn't look good on IE7, but at least it displays the data properly.

v0.57

New feature:

• Added a basic statistics page which summarizes monthly and annual production, generation, and net-usage. This page is reached by clicking on the "Stats" link in the menu on the top right of the eGauge web pages.

Bug fix

• Fix a bug in the Int64.js package which under certain circumstances caused a 64-bit number to be mis-printed with missing zeroes.

v0.56

Bug fix

• Fix a bug that caused browsers to get "stuck" when trying to display a graph that crossed the time of switching from daylight-savings-time to standard time.

v0.55

Bug fix

• Fix an SVG-rendering bug which caused the shaded areas to be displayed incorrectly with the Google Chrome browser.

v0.54

Bug fix

• After hitting the "Save" button in the settings dialog, the response popup is being displayed again.

v0.53

Bug fix

• Make "subpanel" sources work correctly again.

v0.52

New feature:

• Added a watch-dog facility. Once in a blue moon, eGauge appears to get "stuck" in a way where it's possible to ping the device, but nothing else works. Until we can track down and fix the root-cause, the watch-dog is intended to work around this problem by rebooting the device within 30 seconds after the situation arises. Such automatic reboots can be detected after the fact by clicking on the "Status" link. If the date shown there for "Last web-initiated reboot" does not match with the date displayed in "Uptime", then a reboot may have been triggered by the watch-dog or a power failure.

v0.51

Bug fix:

• Fix bug that caused LED-polarity to be dropped when making any configuration-changes via the web-interface.

v0.5

New features:

• The eGauge main page now loads faster, thanks to a more compact encoding of the energy-data.
• The "Time range" is now followed by energy information. Specifically, the information consists of the amount of energy produced during the displayed time-range (red), the amount of energy used (green) and the net energy used (black). This makes it easy to cross-check eGauge measurements with, e.g., utility bills.
• It is now possible to display the individual power sources and loads being measured. The display of particular source or load is enabled in the "Legend" by clicking the checkbox in front of that soruce or load. This allows, for example, to see how much power a solar system is using during the night (to see this curve, you may need to select a "Power zoom" level of 50W or so).
• The "Status" page now displays the revision of the installed software and how long the device has been running.

Bug fixes:

• The power auto-scaling should now work much more reliably and will now also ensure that the "Current" power display is within the range of the power scale.
• The "Settings" now work on Internet Explorer.