# Same Procedure as Every Autumn: New Data for the Heat Pump System

October – time for updating documentation of the heat pump system again! Consolidated data are available in this PDF document.

In the last season there were no special experiments – like last year’s Ice Storage Challenge or using the wood stove. Winter was rather mild, so we needed only ~16.700kWh for space heating plus hot water heating. In the coldest season so far – 2012/13 – the equivalent energy value was ~19.700kWh. The house is located in Eastern Austria, has been built in the 1920s, and has 185m2 floor space since the last major renovation.

(More cross-cultural info:  I use thousands dots and decimal commas).

The seasonal performance factor was about 4,6 [kWh/kWh] – thus the electrical input energy was about 16.700kWh / 4,6 ~ 3.600kWh.

Note: Hot water heating is included and we use flat radiators requiring a higher water supply temperature than the floor heating loops in the new part of the house.

Red: Heating energy ‘produced’ by the heat pump – for space heating and hot water heating. Yellow: Electrical input energy. Green: Performance Factor = Ratio of these energies.

The difference of 16.700kWh – 3.600kWh = 13.100kWh was provided by ambient energy, extracted from our heat source – a combination of underground water/ice tank and an unglazed ribbed pipe solar/air collector.

The solar/air collector has delivered the greater part of the ambient energy, about 10.500kWh:

Energy needed for heating per day (heat pump output) versus energy from the solar/air collector – the main part of the heat pump’s input energy. Negative collector energies indicate passive cooling periods in summer.

Peak Ice was 7 cubic meters, after one cold spell of weather in January:

Ice is formed in the water tank when the energy from the collector is not sufficient to power the heat pump alone, when ambient air temperatures are close to 0°C.

Last autumn’s analysis on economics is still valid: Natural gas is three times as cheap as electricity but with a performance factor well above three heating costs with this system are lower than they would be with a gas boiler.

Is there anything that changed gradually during all these years and which does not primarily depend on climate? We reduced energy for hot tap water heating – having tweaked water heating schedule gradually: Water is heated up once per day and as late as possible, to avoid cooling off the hot storage tank during the night.

We have now started the fifth heating season. This marks also the fifth anniversary of the day we switched on the first ‘test’ version 1.0 of the system, one year before version 2.0.

It’s been about seven years since first numerical simulations, four years since I have been asked if I was serious in trading in IT security for heat pumps, and one year since I tweeted:

# Spam Poetry: “Cris-Crossing the Universe”

I have tried my hands at different kinds of experimental internet poetry, and all of the poems turned out to have a dystopic touch or tantalizing hints to some fundamental philosophical truth. Perhaps this says something about 1) The Internet or 2) about my subconsciousness.

Since I have reduced blogging frequency, the number of spam comments plummeted accordingly – from 600 to 150 spam comments in the queue. So it has got harder and harder to find meaningful spam. In addition, there is a new variety: Such comments are not composed of meaningful sentences, but phrases of three or four words are stitched together to form a lengthy comment that sounds like postmodern poetry in its own right.

But I try to rise to the challenge, and even add one more hurdle. Rules for this poem:

• Each line is a snippet of a spam comment.
• Snippets must not be edited
• Only one snippet can be extracted from one spam comment, but not every comment has to be utilized.
• New: Snippets must be used immediately in the order of spam comments (descending by date), and they must not be re-arranged afterwards.
• All comments have to be harvested in a single session.

The following lines were taken from about 125 spam comments in the queue on October 1st.

The idea shows through the pamphlet
where people need to respond

temperatures will most likely govern
long-lasting usable cartoon figures

in certain places the floor is sinking
We have a very big problem.

withdrawal insomnia
The arrangement exists because of the persistence

using ontology within all things
There should be one internal link

You’ll be able to move to another location
Could certainly come zombies

A Dreamcatcher bard who have been heard
sober as opposed to
stepping off point
the one that has problems with panic attack

We will dissect too
cris-crossing the universe far far.

Scattered all over
the location where the profits have been

conspiracy delayed
raving about choosing real humans

our personal fashionable ethos
As opposed to the isolation
produced by Zombie galleries
creating an irritatingly low experience

in the sci fi shooting living space
extremely like black topics

Our favorite self-theory
That particular creep
seriously electrifying

# Internet of Things. Yet Another Gloomy Post.

Technically, I work with Things, as in the Internet of Things.

As outlined in Everything as a Service many formerly ‘dumb’ products – such as heating systems – become part of service offerings. A vital component of the new services is the technical connection of the Thing in your home to that Big Cloud. It seems every energy-related system has got its own Internet Gateway now: Our photovoltaic generator has one, our control unit has one, and the successor of our heat pump would have one, too. If vendors don’t bundle their offerings soon, we’ll end up with substantial electricity costs for powering a lot of separate gateways.

Experts have warned for years that the Internet of Things (IoT) comes with security challenges. Many Things’ owners still keep default or blank passwords, but the most impressive threat is my opinion is not hacking individual systems: Easily hacked things can be hijacked to serve as zombie clients in a botnet and lauch a joint Distributed Denial of Service attack against a single target. Recently the blog of renowned security reporter Brian Krebs has been taken down, most likely as an act of revenge by DDoSers (Crime is now offered as a service as well.). The attack – a tsunami of more than 600 Gbps – was described as one of the largest the internet had seen so far. Hosting provider OVH was subject to a record-breaking Tbps attack – launched via captured … [cue: hacker movie cliché] … cameras and digital video recorders on the internet.

I am about the millionth blogger ‘reporting’ on this, nothing new here. But the social media news about the DDoS attacks collided with another social media micro outrage  in my mind – about seemingly unrelated IT news: HP had to deal with not-so-positive reporting about its latest printer firmware changes and related policies –  when printers started to refuse to work with third-party cartridges. This seems to be a legal issue or has been presented as such, and I am not interested in that aspect here. What I find interesting is the clash of requirements: After the DDoS attacks many commentators said IoT vendors should be held accountable. They should be forced to update their stuff. On the other hand, end users should remain owners of the IT gadgets they have bought, so the vendor has no right to inflict any policies on them and restrict the usage of devices.

I can relate to both arguments. One of my main motivations ‘in renewable energy’ or ‘in home automation’ is to make users powerful and knowledgable owners of their systems. On the other hand I have been ‘in security’ for a long time. And chasing firmware for IoT devices can be tough for end users.

It is a challenge to walk the tightrope really gracefully here: A printer may be traditionally considered an item we own whereas the internet router provided by the telco is theirs. So we can tinker with the printer’s inner workings as much as we want but we must not touch the router and let the telco do their firmware updates. But old-school devices are given more ‘intelligence’ and need to be connected to the internet to provide additional services – like that printer that allows to print from your smartphone easily (Yes, but only if your register it at the printer manufacturer’s website before.). In addition, our home is not really our castle anymore. Our computers aren’t protected by the telco’s router / firmware all the time, but we work in different networks or in public places. All the Things we carry with us, someday smart wearable technology, will check in to different wireless and mobile networks – so their security bugs should better be fixed in time.

If IoT vendors should be held accountable and update their gadgets, they have to be given the option to do so. But if the device’s host tinkers with it, firmware upgrades might stall. In order to protect themselves from legal persecution, vendors need to state in contracts that they are determined to push security updates and you cannot interfere with it. Security can never be enforced by technology only – for a device located at the end user’s premises.

It is horrible scenario – and I am not sure if I refer to hacking or to proliferation of even more bureaucracy and over-regulation which should protect us from hacking but will add more hurdles for would-be start-ups that dare to sell hardware.

Theoretically a vendor should be able to separate the security-relevant features from nice-to-have updates. For example, in a similar way, in smart meters the functions used for metering (subject to metering law) should be separated from ‘features’ – the latter being subject to remote updates while the former must not. Sources told me that this is not an easy thing to achieve, at least not as easy as presented in the meters’ marketing brochure.

That iconic Linksys router – sold since more than 10 years (and a beloved test devices of mine). Still popular because you could use open source firmware. Something that new security policies might seek to prevent.

If hardware security cannot be regulated, there might be more regulation of internet traffic. Internet Service Providers could be held accountable to remove compromised devices from their networks, for example after having noticed the end user several times. Or smaller ISPs might be cut off by upstream providers. Somewhere in the chain of service providers we will have to deal with more monitoring and regulation, and in one way or other the playful days of the earlier internet (romanticized with hindsight, maybe) are over.

When I saw Krebs’ site going offline, I wondered what small business should do in general: His site is now DDoS-protected by Google’s Project Shield, a service offered to independent journalists and activists after his former pro-bono host could not deal with the load without affecting paying clients. So one of the Siren Servers I commented on critically so often came to rescue! A small provider will not be able to deal with such attacks.

I have no conclusion to offer. Whenever I read news these days – on technology, energy, IT, anything in between, The Future in general – I feel reminded of this tension: Between being an independent neutral netizen and being plugged in to an inescapable matrix, maybe beneficial but Borg-like nonetheless.

# Re-Visiting Carnot’s Theorem

The proof by contradiction used in physics textbooks is one of those arguments that appear surprising, then self-evident, then deceptive in its simplicity. You – or maybe only: I – cannot resist turning it over and over in your head again, viewing it from different angles.

tl;dr: I just wanted to introduce the time-honored tradition of ASCII text art images to illustrate Carnot’s Theorem, but this post got out of hand when I mulled about how to  refute an erroneous counter-argument. As there are still research papers being written about Carnot’s efficiency I feel vindicated for writing a really long post though.

Carnot‘s arguments prove that there is a maximum efficiency of a thermodynamic heat engine – a machine that turns heat into mechanical energy. He gives the maximum value by evaluating one specific, idealized process, and then proves that a machine with higher efficiency would give rise to a paradox. The engine uses part of the heat available in a large, hot reservoir of heat and turns it into mechanical work and waste heat – the latter dumped to a colder ‘environment’ in a 4-step process. (Note that while our modern reformulation of the proof by contradiction refers to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Carnot’s initial version was based on the caloric theory.)

The efficiency of such an engine η – mechanical energy per cycle over input heat energy – only depends on the two temperatures (More details and references here):

$\eta_\text{carnot} = \frac {T_1-T_2}{T_1}$

These are absolute temperatures in Kelvin; this universal efficiency can be used to define what we mean by absolute temperature.

I am going to use ‘nice’ numbers. To make ηcarnot equal to 1/2, the hot temperature
T1 = 273° = 546 K, and the colder ‘environment’ has T2 = 0°C = 273 K.

If this machine is run in reverse, it uses mechanical input energy to ‘pump’ energy from the cold environment to the hot reservoir – it is a heat pump using the ambient reservoir as a heat source. The Coefficient of Performance (COP, ε) of the heat pump is heat output over mechanical input, the inverse of the efficiency of the corresponding engine. εcarnot is 2 for the temperatures given above.

If we combine two such perfect machines – an engine and a heat pump, both connected to the hot space and to the cold environment, their effects cancel out: The mechanical energy released by the engine drives the heat pump which ‘pumps back’ the same amount of energy.

In the ASCII images energies are translated to arrows, and the number of parallel arrows indicates the amount of energy per cycle (or power). For each device, the number or arrows flowing in and out is the same; energy is always conserved. I am viewing this from the heat pump’s perspective, so I call the cold environment the source, and the hot environment room.

Neither of the heat reservoirs are heated or cooled in this ideal case as the same amount of energy flows from and to each of the heat reservoirs:

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|         Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
| | | |                         | | | |
v v v v                         ^ ^ ^ ^
| | | |                         | | | |
|------------|                 |---------------|
|   Engine   |->->->->->->->->-|   Heat pump   |
|  Eta = 1/2 |->->->->->->->->-| COP=2 Eta=1/2 |
|------------|                 |---------------|
| |                             | |
v v                             ^ ^
| |                             | |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|

If either of the two machines works less than perfectly and in tandem with a perfect machine, anything is still fine:

If the engine is far less than perfect and has an efficiency of only 1/4 – while the heat pump still works perfectly – more of the engine’s heat energy input is now converted to waste heat and diverted to the environment:

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|         Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
| | | |                           | |
v v v v                           ^ ^
| | | |                           | |
|------------|                 |---------------|
|   Engine   |->->->->->->->->-|   Heat pump   |
|  Eta = 1/4 |                 | COP=2 Eta=1/2 |
|------------|                 |---------------|
| | |                             |
v v v                             ^
| | |                             |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|

Now two net units of energy flow from the hot room to the environment (summing up the arrows to and from the devices):

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|         Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
| |
v v
| |
|------------------|
|   Combination:   |
| Eta=1/4 COP=1/2  |
|------------------|
| |
v v
| |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|

Using a real-live heat pump with a COP of 3/2 (< 2) together with a perfect engine …

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|         Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
| | | |                             | | |
v v v v                             ^ ^ ^
| | | |                             | | |
|------------|                 |-----------------|
|   Engine   |->->->->->->->->-|    Heat pump    |
|  Eta = 1/2 |->->->->->->->->-|     COP=3/2     |
|------------|                 |-----------------|
| |                                 |
v v                                 ^
| |                                 |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|

… causes again a non-paradoxical net flow of one unit of energy from the room to the environment.

In the most extreme case  a poor heat pump (not worth this name) with a COP of 1 just translates mechanical energy into heat energy 1:1. This is a resistive heating element, a heating rod, and net heat fortunately flows from hot to cold without paradoxes:

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|         Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
| |                                |
v v                                ^
| |                                |
|------------|                 |-----------------|
|   Engine   |->->->->->->->->-|   'Heat pump'   |
|  Eta = 1/2 |                 |     COP = 1     |
|------------|                 |-----------------|
|
v
|
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|

The textbook paradox in encountered, when an ideal heat pump is combined with an allegedly better-than-possible engine, e.g. one with an efficiency:

ηengine = 2/3 (> ηcarnot = 1/2)

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|         Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
| | |                           | | | |
v v v                           ^ ^ ^ ^
| | |                           | | | |
|------------|                 |---------------|
|   Engine   |->->->->->->->->-|   Heat pump   |
|  Eta = 2/3 |->->->->->->->->-| COP=2 Eta=1/2 |
|------------|                 |---------------|
|                               | |
v                               ^ ^
|                               | |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|

The net effect / heat flow is then:

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K       |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|
^
|
|------------------|
|   Combination:   |
| Eta=3/2; COP=1/2 |
|------------------|
|
^
|
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|       Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K       |
|----------------------------------------------------------|

One unit of heat would flow from the environment to the room, from the colder to the warmer body without any other change being made to the system. The combination of these machines would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics; it is a Perpetuum Mobile of the Second Kind.

If the heat pump has a higher COP than the inverse of the perfect engine’s efficiency, a similar paradox arises, and again one unit of heat flows in the forbidden direction:

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|         Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
| |                             | | |
v v                             ^ ^ ^
| |                             | | |
|------------|                 |---------------|
|   Engine   |->->->->->->->->-|   Heat pump   |
|  Eta = 1/2 |                 |    COP = 3    |
|------------|                 |---------------|
|                               | |
v                               ^ ^
|                               | |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|

A weird question: Can’t we circumvent the paradox if we pair the impossible superior engine with a poor heat pump?

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|         Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
| | |                             | |
v v v                             ^ ^
| | |                             | |
|------------|                 |---------------|
|   Engine   |->->->->->->->->-|   Heat pump   |
|  Eta = 2/3 |->->->->->->->->-|    COP = 1    |
|------------|                 |---------------|
|
v
|
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------

Indeed: If the COP of the heat pump (= 1) is smaller than the inverse of the engine’s efficiency (3/2), there will be no apparent violation of the Second Law – one unit of net heat flows from hot to cold.

An engine with low efficiency 1/4 would ‘fix’ the second paradox involving the better-than-perfect heat pump:

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|         Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
| | | |                          | | |
v v v v                          ^ ^ ^
| | | |                          | | |
|------------|                 |---------------|
|   Engine   |->->->->->->->->-|   Heat pump   |
|  Eta = 1/4 |                 |     COP=3     |
|------------|                 |---------------|
| | |                            | |
v v v                            ^ ^
| | |                            | |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|

But we cannot combine heat pumps and engines at will, just to circumvent the paradox – one counter-example is sufficient: Any realistic engine combined with any realistic heat pump – plus all combinations of those machines with ‘worse’ ones – have to result in net flow from hot to cold …

The Second Law identifies such ‘sets’ of engines and heat pumps that will all work together nicely. It’s easier to see this when all examples are condensed into one formula:

The heat extracted in total from the hot room – Q1 –  is the difference of heat used by the engine and heat delivered by the heat pump, both of which are defined in relation to the same mechanical work W:

$Q_1 = W\left (\frac{1}{\eta_\text{engine}}-\varepsilon_\text{heatpump}\right)$

This is also automatically equal to Qas another quick calculation shows or by just considering that energy is conserved: Some heat goes into the combination of the two machines, part of it – W – flows internally from the engine to the heat pump. But no part of the input Q1 can be lost, so the output of the combined machine has to match the input. Energy ‘losses’ such as energy due to friction will flow to either of the heat reservoirs: If an engine is less-then-perfect, more heat will be wasted to the environment; and if the heat pump is less-than-perfect a greater part of mechanical energy will be translated to heat only 1:1. You might be even lucky: Some part of heat generated by friction might end up in the hot room.

As Q1 has to be > 0 according to the Second Low, the performance numbers have to related by this inequality:

$\frac{1}{\eta_\text{engine}}\geq\varepsilon_\text{heatpump}$

The equal sign is true if the effects of the two machines just cancel each other.

If we start from a combination of two perfect machines (ηengine = 1/2 = 1/εheatpump) and increase either ηengine or εheatpump, this condition would be violated and heat would flow from cold to hot without efforts.

But also an engine with efficiency = 1 would work happily with the worst heat pump with COP = 1. No paradox would arise at first glance  – as 1/1 >= 1:

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|         Hot room at temperature T_1 = 273°C = 546 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|
|                                |
v                                ^
|                                |
|------------|                 |-----------------|
|   Engine   |->->->->->->->->-|   'Heat pump'   |
|   Eta = 1  |                 |      COP=1      |
|------------|                 |-----------------|

|----------------------------------------------------------|
|        Cold source at temperature T_2 = 0°C = 273 K      |
|----------------------------------------------------------|

What’s wrong here?

Because of conservation of energy ε is always greater equal 1; so the set of valid combinations of machines all consistent with each other is defined by:

$\frac{1}{\eta_\text{engine}}\geq\varepsilon_\text{heatpump}\geq1$

… for all efficiencies η and COPs / ε of machines in a valid set. The combination η = ε = 1 is still not ruled out immediately.

But if the alleged best engine (in a ‘set’) would have an efficiency of 1, then the alleged best heat pump would have an Coefficient of Performance of only 1 – and this is actually the only heat pump possible as ε has to be both lower equal and greater equal than 1. It cannot get better without creating paradoxes!

If one real-live heat pump is found that is just slightly better than a heating rod – say
ε = 1,1 – then performance numbers for the set of consisent, non-paradoxical machines need to fulfill:

$\eta_\text{engine}\leq\eta_\text{best engine}$

and

$\varepsilon_\text{heatpump}\leq\varepsilon_\text{best heatpump}$

… in addition to the inequality relating η and ε.

If ε = 1,1 is a candidate for the best heat pump, a set of valid machines would comprise:

• All heat pumps with ε between 1 and 1,1 (as per limits on ε)
• All engines with η between 0 and 0,9 (as per inequality following the Second Law plus limit on η).

Consistent sets of machines are thus given by a stronger condition – by adding a limit for both efficiency and COP ‘in between’:

$\frac{1}{\eta_\text{engine}}\geq\text{Some Number}\geq\varepsilon_\text{heatpump}\geq1$

Carnot has designed a hypothetical ideal heat pump that could have a COP of εcarnot = 1/ηcarnot. It is a limiting case of a reversible machine, but feasible on principle. εcarnot  is thus a valid upper limit for heat pumps, a candidate for Some Number. In order to make this inequality true for all sets of machines (ideal ones plus all worse ones) then 1/ηcarnot = εcarnot also constitutes a limit for engines:

$\frac{1}{\eta_\text{engine}}\geq\frac{1}{\eta_\text{carnot}}\geq\varepsilon_\text{heatpump}\geq1$

So in order to rule out all paradoxes, Some Number in Between has to be provided for each set of machines. But what defines a set? As machines of totally different making have to work with each other without violating this equality, this number can only be a function of the only parameters characterizing the system – the two temperatures

Carnot’s efficiency is only a function of the temperatures. His hypothetical process is reversible, the machine can work either as a heat pump or an engine. If we could come up with a better process for a reversible heat pump (ε > εcarnot), the machine run in reverse would be an engine with η less than ηcarnot, whereas a ‘better’ engine would lower the upper bound for heat pumps.

If you have found one truly reversible process, both η and ε associated with it are necessarily the upper bounds of performance of the respective machines, so you cannot push Some Number in one direction or the other, and the efficiencies of all reversible engines have to be equal – and thus equal to ηcarnot. The ‘resistive heater’ with ε = 1 is the iconic irreversible device. It will not turn into a perfect engine with η = 1 when ‘run in reverse’.

The seemingly odd thing is that 1/ηcarnot appears like a lower bound for ε at first glance if you just declare ηcarnot an upper bound for corresponding engines and take the inverse, while in practice and according to common sense it is the maximum value for all heat pumps, including irreversible ones. (As a rule of thumb a typical heat pump for space heating has a COP only 50% of 1/ηcarnot.)

But this ‘contradiction’ is yet another way of stating that there is one universal performance indicator of all reversible machines making use of two heat reservoirs: The COP of a hypothetical ‘superior’ reversible heat pump would be at least 1/ηcarnot  … as good as Carnot’s reversible machine, maybe better. But the same is true for the hypothetical superior engine with an efficiency of at least ηcarnot. So the performance numbers of all reversible machines (all in one set, characterized by the two temperatures) have to be exactly the same.

Historical piston compressor (from the time when engines with pistons looked like the ones in textbooks), installed 1878 in the salt mine of Bex, Switzerland. 1943 it was still in operation. Such machines used in salt processing were considered the first heat pumps.

# Hacking My Heat Pump – Part 2: Logging Energy Values

In the last post, I showed how to use Raspberry Pi as CAN bus logger – using a test bus connected to control unit UVR1611. Now I have connected it to my heat pump’s bus.

Credits for software and instructions:

Special thanks to SK Pang Electronics who provided me with CAN boards for Raspberry Pi after having read my previous post!!

CAN extension boards for Raspberry Pi, by SK Pang. Left: PiCAN 2 board (40 GPIO pins), right: smaller, retired PiCAN board with 26 GPIO pins – the latter fits my older Pi. In contrast to the board I used in the first tests, these have also a serial (DB9) interface.

Wiring CAN bus

We use a Stiebel-Eltron WPF 7 basic heat pump installed in 2012. The English website now refers to model WPF 7 basic s.

The CAN bus connections described in the German manual (Section 12.2.3) and the English manual (Wiring diagram, p.25) are similar:

CAN bus connections inside WPF 7 basic heat pump. For reference, see the description of the Physical Layer of the CAN protocol. Usage of the power supply (BUS +) is optional.

H, L and GROUND wires from the Pi’s CAN board are connected to the respective terminals inside the heat pump. I don’t use the optional power supply as the CAN board is powered by Raspberry Pi, and I don’t terminate the bus correctly with 120 Ω. As with the test bus, wires are rather short and thus have low resistance.

Heat pump with cover removed – CAN High (H – red), Low (L – blue), and Ground (yellow) are connected. The CAN cable is a few meters long and connects to the Raspberry Pi CAN board.

In the first tests Raspberry Pi had the privilege to overlook the heat pump room as the top of the buffer tank was the only spot the WLAN signal was strong enough …

Typical, temporary nerd’s test setup.

… or I used a cross-over ethernet cable and a special office desk:

Typical, temporary nerd’s workplace.

Now Raspberry Pi has its final position on the ‘organic controller board’, next to control unit UVR16x2 – and after a major upgrade to both LAN and WLAN all connections are reliable.

Raspberry Pi with PiCAN board from SK Pang and UVR16x2 control unit from Technische Alternative (each connected to a different CAN bus).

Bringing up the interface

According to messpunkt.org the bit rate of Stiebel-Eltron’s bus is 20000 bit/s; so the interface is activated with:

sudo ip link set can0 type can bitrate 20000
sudo ifconfig can0 up

Watching the idle bus

First I was simply watching with sniffer Wireshark if the heat pump says anything without being triggered. It does not – only once every few minutes there are two packets. So I need to learn to talk to it.

Learning about CAN communications

SK Pang provides an example of requesting data using open source tool cansend: The so-called CAN ID is followed by # and the actual data. This CAN ID refers to an ‘object’ – a set of properties of the device, like the set of inputs or outputs – and it can contain also the node ID of the device on the bus. There are many CAN tutorials on the net, I found this (German) introduction and this English tutorial very useful.

I was able to follow the communications of the two nodes in my test bus as I knew their node numbers and what to expect – the data logger would ask the controller for a set of configured sensor outputs every minute. Most packets sent by either bus member are related to object 480, indicating the transmission of a set of values (Process Data Exchange Objects, PDOs. More details on UVR’s CAN communication, in German)

Sniffing test CAN bus – communication of UVR1611 (node no 1) and logger BL-NET (node number 62 = be). Both devices use an ID related to object ID 480 plus their respective node number, as described here.

So I need to know object ID(s) and properly formed data values to ask the heat pump for energy readings – without breaking something by changing values.

Collecting interesting heat pump parameters for monitoring

I am very grateful for Jürg’s CAN tool can_scan that allow for querying a Stiebel-Eltron heat pump for specific values and also for learning about all possible parameters (listed in so-called Elster tables).

In order to check the list of allowed CAN IDs used by the heat pump I run:

./can_scan can0 680

can0 is the (default) name of the interface created earlier and 680 is my (the sender’s) CAN ID, one of the IDs allowed by can_scan.

Start of output:

elster-kromschroeder can-bus address scanner and test utility
copyright (c) 2014 Jürg Müller, CH-5524

scan on CAN-id: 680
list of valid can id's:

000 (8000 = 325-07)
180 (8000 = 325-07)
301 (8000 = 325-07)
480 (8000 = 325-07)
601 (8000 = 325-07)

In order to investigate available values and their meaning I run can_scan for each of these IDs:

./can_scan can0 680 180

Embedded below is part of the output, containing some of the values (and /* Comments */). This list of parameters is much longer than the list of values available via the display on the heat pump!

I am mainly interested in metered energies and current temperatures of the heat source (brine) and the ‘environment’ – to compare these values to other sensors’ output:

elster-kromschroeder can-bus address scanner and test utility
copyright (c) 2014 Jürg Müller, CH-5524

0001:  0000  (FEHLERMELDUNG  0)
0003:  019a  (SPEICHERSOLLTEMP  41.0)
0005:  00f0  (RAUMSOLLTEMP_I  24.0)
0006:  00c8  (RAUMSOLLTEMP_II  20.0)
0007:  00c8  (RAUMSOLLTEMP_III  20.0)
0008:  00a0  (RAUMSOLLTEMP_NACHT  16.0)
0009:  3a0e  (UHRZEIT  14:58)
000a:  1208  (DATUM  18.08.)
000c:  00e9  (AUSSENTEMP  23.3) /* Ambient temperature */
000d:  ffe6  (SAMMLERISTTEMP  -2.6)
000e:  fe70  (SPEICHERISTTEMP  -40.0)
0010:  0050  (GERAETEKONFIGURATION  80)
0013:  01e0  (EINSTELL_SPEICHERSOLLTEMP  48.0)
0016:  0140  (RUECKLAUFISTTEMP  32.0) /* Heating water return temperature */
...
01d4:  00e2  (QUELLE_IST  22.6) /* Source (brine) temperature */
...
/* Hot tap water heating energy MWh + kWh */
/* Daily totaly */
092a:  030d  (WAERMEERTRAG_WW_TAG_WH  781)
092b:  0000  (WAERMEERTRAG_WW_TAG_KWH  0)
/* Total energy since system startup */
092c:  0155  (WAERMEERTRAG_WW_SUM_KWH  341)
092d:  001a  (WAERMEERTRAG_WW_SUM_MWH  26)
/* Space heating energy, MWh + kWh */
/* Daily totals */
092e:  02db  (WAERMEERTRAG_HEIZ_TAG_WH  731)
092f:  0006  (WAERMEERTRAG_HEIZ_TAG_KWH  6)
/* Total energy since system startup */
0930:  0073  (WAERMEERTRAG_HEIZ_SUM_KWH  115)
0931:  0027  (WAERMEERTRAG_HEIZ_SUM_MWH  39)

Querying for one value

The the heating energy to date in MWh corresponds to index 0931:

./can_scan can0 680 180.0931

The output of can_scan already contains the sum of the MWh (0931) and kWh (0930) values:

elster-kromschroeder can-bus address scanner and test utility
copyright (c) 2014 Jürg Müller, CH-5524

value: 0027  (WAERMEERTRAG_HEIZ_SUM_MWH  39.115)

The network trace shows that the logger (using ID 680) queries for two values related to ID 180 – the kWh and the MWh part:

Network trace of Raspberry Pi CAN logger (ID 680) querying CAN ID 180. Since the returned MWh value is the sum of MWh and kWh value, two queries are needed. Detailed interpretation of packets in the text below.

Interpretation of these four packets – as explained on Jürg’s website here and here in German:

00 00 06 80 05 00 00 00 31 00 fa 09 31
00 00 01 80 07 00 00 00 d2 00 fa 09 31 00 27
00 00 06 80 05 00 00 00 31 00 fa 09 30
00 00 01 80 07 00 00 00 d2 00 fa 09 30 00 73
|---------| ||          |---| || |---| |---|
1)          2)          3)    4) 5)    6)

1) CAN-ID used by the sender: 180 or 680
2) No of bytes of data - 5 for queries, 8 for replies
3) CAN ID of the communications partner and type of message.
For queries the second digit is 1.
Pattern: n1 0m with n = 180 / 80 = 3 (hex) and m = 180 mod 7 = 0
(hex) Partner ID = 30 * 8 (hex) + 00 = 180
Responses follow a similar pattern using second digit 2:
Partner ID is: d0 * 8 + 00 = 680
4) fa indicates that the Elster index no is greater equal ff.
5) Index (parameter) queried for: 0930 for kWh and 0931 for MWh
6) Value returned 27h=39,73h=115

I am not sure which node IDs my logger and the heat pump use as the IDs. 180 seems to be an object ID without node ID added while 301 would refer to object ID + node ID 1. But I suppose with two devices on the bus only, and one being only a listener, there is no ambiguity.

Logging script

I found all interesting indices listed under CAN ID 180; so am now looping through this set once every three minutes with can_scan, cut out the number, and add it to a new line in a text log file. The CAN interfaces is (re-)started every time in case something happens, and the file is sent to my local server via FTP.

Every month a new log file is started, and log files – to be imported into my SQL Server  and processed as log files from UVR1611 / UVR16x2, the PV generator’s inverter, or the smart meter.

(Not the most elegant script – consider it a ‘proof of concept’! Another option is to trigger the sending of data with can_scan and collect output via can_logger.)

Interesting to-be-logged parameters are added to a ‘table’ – a file called indices:

0016 RUECKLAUFISTTEMP
01d4 QUELLE_IST
01d6 WPVORLAUFIST
091b EL_AUFNAHMELEISTUNG_WW_TAG_KWH
091d EL_AUFNAHMELEISTUNG_WW_SUM_MWH
091f EL_AUFNAHMELEISTUNG_HEIZ_TAG_KWH
0921 EL_AUFNAHMELEISTUNG_HEIZ_SUM_MWH
092b WAERMEERTRAG_WW_TAG_KWH
092f WAERMEERTRAG_HEIZ_TAG_KWH
092d WAERMEERTRAG_WW_SUM_MWH
0931 WAERMEERTRAG_HEIZ_SUM_MWH
000c AUSSENTEMP
0923 WAERMEERTRAG_2WE_WW_TAG_KWH
0925 WAERMEERTRAG_2WE_WW_SUM_MWH
0927 WAERMEERTRAG_2WE_HEIZ_TAG_KWH
0929 WAERMEERTRAG_2WE_HEIZ_SUM_MWH

Script:

# Define folders
logdir="/CAN_LOGS"
scriptsdir="/CAN_SCRIPTS"
indexfile="$scriptsdir/indices" # FTP parameters ftphost="FTP_SERVER" ftpuser="FTP_USER" ftppw="***********" # Exit if scripts not found if ! [ -d$scriptsdir ]
then
echo Directory $scriptsdir does not exist! exit 1 fi # Create log dir if it does not exist yet if ! [ -d$logdir ]
then
mkdir $logdir fi sleep 5 echo ====================================================================== # Start logging while [ 0 -le 1 ] do # Get current date and start new logging line now=$(date +'%Y-%m-%d;%H:%M:%S')
line=$now year=$(date +'%Y')
month=$(date +'%m') logfile=$year-$month-can-log-wpf7.csv logfilepath=$logdir/$logfile # Create a new file for every month, write header line # Create a new file for every month if ! [ -f$logfilepath ]
then
do
header=$(echo$indexline | cut -d" " -f2)
headers+=";"$header done <$indexfile ; echo "$headers" >$logfilepath
fi

# (Re-)start CAN interface
sudo ip link set can0 type can bitrate 20000
sudo ip link set can0 up

# Loop through interesting Elster indices
do
# Get output of can_scan for this index, search for line with output values
index=$(echo$indexline | cut -d" " -f1)
value=$($scriptsdir/./can_scan can0 680 180.$index | grep "value" | replace ")" "" | grep -o "\<[0-9]*\.\?[0-9]*$" | replace "." ",")
echo "$index$value"

# Append value to line of CSV file
line="$line;$value"
done < $indexfile ; echo$line >> $logfilepath # echo FTP log file to server ftp -n -v$ftphost << END_SCRIPT
ascii
user $ftpuser$ftppw
binary
cd RPi
ls
lcd $logdir put$logfile
ls
bye
END_SCRIPT

echo "------------------------------------------------------------------"

# Wait - next logging data point
sleep 180

# Runs forever, use Ctrl+C to stop
done


In order to autostart the script I added a line to the rc.local file:

su pi -c '/CAN_SCRIPTS/pkt_can_monitor'

Using the logged values

In contrast to brine or water temperature heating energies are not available on the heat pump’s CAN bus in real-time: The main MWh counter is only incremented once per day at midnight. Then the daily kWh counter is added to the previous value.

Daily or monthly energy increments are calculated from the logged values in the SQL database and for example used to determine performance factors (heating energy over electrical energy) shown in our documentation of measurement data for the heat pump system.

# Hacking My Heat Pump – Part 1: CAN Bus Testing with UVR1611

In the old times, measuring data manually sometimes meant braving the elements:

White-Out in winter 2012/13! The barely visible wall is the solar/air collector of our heat pump system.

Measuring ground temperature in different depths.

Now, nearly all measurements are automated:

Online schematic of the heat pump system, showing the temperature and flow sensors needed for control, and a few of the sensors needed for monitoring only (radiation, ground temperature). Screenshot from CMI/UVR1611/UVR16x, Details on system’s operation in this post.

In order to calculate the seasonal performance factor of the heat pump system we have still used the ‘official’ energy reading provided by the heat pump’s display.

Can’t this be automated, too?

Our Stiebel-Eltron WPF7 basic is a simple brine/water heat pump without ‘smart’ features. Our control units turns it on and off via a latch contact.

But there are two interesting interfaces:

• An optical interface to connect a service PC.
• Wired connections to an internal CAN bus – a simple fieldbus used for example in vehicles.

We picked option 2 as it does not require an optical device to read off data. Our control unit also uses CAN bus, and we have test equipment for wired CAN connections.

I always want to use what we already have, and I had a Raspberry Pi not yet put into ‘productive’ use. As usual, you find geeks online who did already what you plan: Reading off CAN bus data provided by a Stiebel-Eltron heat pump using a Raspberry Pi.

In this first post, I am covering the test hardware setup. Before connecting to the heat pump I wanted to test with CAN devices I am familiar with.

Credits

I am indebted to the following sources for information and tools:

On Stiebel-Eltron heat pumps’ CAN bus plus Raspberry Pi

On Raspberry Pi and CAN bus in general / for other applications:

CAN converter

RPi has so-called GPIO pins that let you control devices in the real world. Talking to a CAN device requires an extension board to be connected to these pins.

My challenge: I had the older version – ‘Model B’ – with 26 GPIO pins only. The successor model B Plus had 40 pins. While the pin assignment was not changed, newer CAN extension boards (like this from SK Pang) were too large physically for the old Pi (The older, smaller board from SK Pang had been retired). I was glad to find this small board on ebay.

Edit, 2016-08-24: I replaced the board shown below by SK Pang’s retired PiCAN board – see part 2.

My Pi plus extension board:

CAN extension board connected to the Pi’s GPIO pins and to CAN bus (grey, three wires yellow, red, blue). Black (right) – electrical power, Blue (left): Ethernet. See more info on wiring below in the text.

Wiring the test CAN bus

The image shows the CAN board attached to the Pi, with CAN High, Low, and Ground connected. Following standards, CAN bus needs to be terminated on both ends, using a 120Ω resistor. As our wires are quite short and we had never observed issues with not / falsely terminated short CAN busses so far, we did not add proper termination (BTW: Thanks to ebay seller ZAB for providing the proper resistor!)

In the final setup, the other end of the CAN cable has to be connected to heat pump’s internal bus.

For testing purposes, I am building a CAN bus with three member devices:

1. Test control unit UVR1611 by Technische Alternative. This test unit does not control anything. A single temperature sensor is connected to check if logging works as expected.
2. The unit’s data logger BL-NET: The logger and the control unit communicate via CAN bus and logging data can be transferred to a PC via ethernet. For more details on using control units and loggers by Technische Alternative see this post.
3. My Raspberry Pi plus CAN board – connected to BL-NET.

Middle: Control unit UVR1611 (box with display), one Pt1000 temperature sensor connected (metal tube, black cable), Top: Data logger BL-NET (white box), connected to UVR1611 and Raspberry PI via CAN bus (grey CAN cables, blue plug). The yellow LAN / ethernet cable is for connecting a test PC.

I am using software WinSol on a PC connected via Ethernet to the data logger – to configure logging (BL-NET’s IP address) and to check if the temperature sensor works. BL-NET is set to log data every minute, so that I am sure that CAN packets are available on the bus often. More on WinSol and BL-NET here.

Activating CAN capabilities

Operating system update: I had first used the Raspberry Pi in 2014 using the Raspbian operating system, and I used a pre-installed SD card. Newer versions of the Raspbian Linux operating system do support CAN interfaces, so I just had to upgrade the kernel, described e.g. in CowFish’s instructions (see Software Installation section)

Operating system config: The CAN interface needs the underlying SPI bus – which has to be activated in the Pi’s configuration. This is described in detail on the blog of board vendor SK Pang.

Setting bit rate and bringing up the CAN interface

In order to check if software has been installed correctly, a virtual CAN interface can be configured as a rehearsal:

sudo modprobe vcan
sudo ip link add vcan0 type vcan
sudo ip link set vcan0 up

This interface is not used, so sniffer software (as Wireshark, see below) will not show any communication.

If a physical CAN interface is activated if no CAN bus is physically connected an error cannot find device can0 is expected.

The critical parameter for the physical CAN bus is the bit rate of the bus. For an existing bus, you need to figure out its bit rate from documentation.

According to messpunkt.org the bit rate for the heat pump’s is 20kbit/s. UVR1611’s bus uses bit rate is 50kbit/s, so the interface is configured with

sudo ip link set can0 type can bitrate 50000
sudo ifconfig can0 up


Troubleshooting wrong bit rate

If this is not configured correctly, you will not get errors but you will simply don’t see any packets. Checking the CAN bus (with erroneously configured bit rate) with

sudo ip -s -d link show can0

showed that CAN state is BUS OFF …

Inspecting CAN bus performance details, having configured the UVR1611 bus (requiring 50kbit/s) with only 20kbit/s.

… a state the device can enter if there have been too many errors on the bus according to this documentation the CAN protocol family in Linux.

If the bit rate is set to 50000, packets are visible now.

Watching packets flowing by

I’ve installed Wireshark sniffer on the PI…

sudo apt-get install wireshark


… and selected the can0 interface. Packets are flowing, and Wireshark parses them correctly as CAN Protocol!

Network trace of CAN communications on the test CAN bus, consisting of UVR1611 and data logger BL-NET (Talking to each other) plus Raspberry Pi as silent sniffer.

If you know ‘how to speak CAN’ other devices on the bus can be polled for measurement values, using tools, like the Jürg’s CAN Progs or SK Pang’s Test tools linked at the bottom of this article.

In the next post in this series I will cover the setup of the Raspberry Pi CAN sniffer for the heat pump’s CAN bus.

>> Continued >> Part 2

# Self-Sufficiency Poetry

Our self-sufficiency quota for electrical energy is 30%, but what about the garden?

Since I haven’t smart metered every edible wildflower consumed, I resort to Search Term Poetry and random images. This is a summer blog post, lacking the usual number crunching and investigative tech journalism.

(Search terms are from WordPress statistics and Google Tools)

Direct self-consumption quota was nearly 100% last year (no preservation), and self-sufficiency was very low, with one exception: Yarrow tea.

This year we will reach 100% herbal tea self-sufficiency:

The solar/air collector is boosting yarrow harvest – and we have yet to include its cosmic quantum free energy focusing effect in the marketing brochure.

fringe science theories
can efficiency be greater than 1

But it also boosts vitality of other life forms:

alien energy

I cannot prove that these particular slimy aliens – edible and a protected species in Austria – are harmful as I never caught them red-handed. You just need to be careful when collecting vegetables to avoid the slimy parts.

We are self-sufficient re green ‘salad’ and ‘fake spinach’ for about half a year. Our top edible wild flowers in terms of yield are Dandelion, Fireweed, Meadow Goat’s Beard …

why does the grim reaper have a scythe

… and White Stonecrop: both tasty …

jurassic park jelly

… and ornamental:

zeitgeisty

With standard vegetables (accepted as edible by the majority) we did crop rotation – and the tomatoes look happiest as solitary plants in new places …

analyzing spatial models of choice and judgment

The Surprise Vegetable Award goes to an old heirloom variety, called Gartenmelde in German:

physics metaphors

Last year exactly one seedling showed up, and we left it untouched. This year the garden was flooded with purple plants in spring:

virtual zen garden

There are two main categories of edible plants – and two different branches of the food chain: Things we mainly eat, like tomatoes, herbs, onion, and garlic …

old-fashioned

… and the ones dedicated to alien species. Top example: The plants that should provide for our self-sufficiency in carbohydrates:

simple experiment

In the background of this image you see the helpful aliens in our garden, the ones that try to make themselves useful in this biosphere:

force on garden hose
so called art

But looking closer, there is another army of slimy life-forms, well organized and possibly controlled by a superior civilization in another dimension:

the matrix intro
protocol negotiation failed please try again

microwaving live animals

This garden is fertilizer- and pest-control-free, so we can only try to complement the food chain with proper – and more likeable – creatures:

solutions to problems

Yes, I have been told already it might not eat this particular variety of aliens as their slime is too bitter. I hope for some mutation!

But we are optimistic: We managed to tune in other life-forms to our philosophy as well and made them care about our energy technology:

so you want to be an engineer

This is a young blackbird. Grown up, it will skillfully de-slime and kill aliens, Men-in-Black-style.

Life-forms too quick or too small for our random snapshot photography deserve an honorable mention: Welcome, little snake (again an alien-killer) and thanks mason bees for clogging every hole or tube in the shed!

It is a pity I wasted the jurassic park search term on the snail already as of course we have pet dinosaurs:

So in summary, this biotope really has a gigantic bug, as we nerds say.

sniff all internet access