TED 5000 iPhone App - Home energy on the go

TED 5000 iPhone App

I've been hearing rumors about a TED 5000 iPhone application for a few weeks now and I was happy to search the iPhone app store today for "TED 5000" and find the app there waiting for me. The app was developed by Brent Halsey and is a very nice way to see what your TED 5000 is doing when you are away from your computer or display unit. Thankfully it is free!

The application displays the following:

Gateway time
Current Power
Current Cost (Hr)
Average Power (Hr)
Average Cost (Hr)

The only downside to the application is that unlike the TED display unit, it is not a real-time feed. The app only refreshes when you tell it to. The "Gateway Time" on the app is the time that the iPhone app pinged the Gateway to get the data. If you wanted to see the data every minute, you would have to refresh every minute. It currently does not display any trends or reports, just a snapshot of your instantaneous household energy consumption. I'm not sure if future editions of the app will have added functionality, or if this functionality is limited due to technical limitations imposed by the TED 5000 unit.

Since my TED 5000 is hooked into my wireless router and I am not doing anything fancy (like posting my TED 5000 information on a dedicated web-site for all to see) I am only able to use the iPhone app to access my gateway when my iPhone is on my home wireless network. If I were using 3G or on the internet somewhere else the app would not work.

Setting up the application is very straightforward. Once you download the free application, you just have to enter in your TED 5000 IP address. I had forgotten how to find my TED's IP address and when I googled the topic, I came across a comment on Mapawatt from Loren that I had overlooked addressing this very own topic:

David, you might call Roman at TED regarding finding your IP address. I just spoke with him and he guided me through it very quickly. However, your situation will be a bit different because of the fact that I have Windows on my Mac which allowed me to find the IP address very easily using the Run command and typing in “cmd” and then “ping ted5000″ which gave me the IP. I was then able to simply type in an address that looks like http://192.xxx.x.xx/Footprints.html and everything works just great.

After entering in your IP address you're all set to go. If you have problems, make sure your iPhone is connected to your home wireless network by choosing (on the iPhone) Setting -->Wi-Fi--> On-->Choose your network. As long as your TED gateway is hooked into the same wireless router that the iPhone uses, you should be fine.

For me, it's nice to have this capability on my phone so I dont have to carry around the display unit (which stays in my office) if I am downstairs or in bed and I am curious about how much power my house is consuming. Eventually I am going to put my TED 5000 on a dedicated page so I can access the data from anywhere, so this is just the start. We all the know the smart-grid will be here eventually, but it sure is nice to see glimpses of it right now!

Tags:

iPhone energy app

mobile power consumption display

smart grid

TED 5000 iPhone

Comments

Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/07/2009 - 16:09

Dumb question, but did you set up the internal TED server to listen to port 1000? And, of course, forward port 1000 to TED then.

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/08/2009 - 05:56

You can also try testing the footprints software externally by hitting it using the IP address assigned to your modem. Also- I've submitted an update to the TED 5000 iPhone app about a week ago, but Apple is really slow at approving these things. I didn't get all of the requested changes in, but some good ones. Let me know when you see it!

Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/05/2009 - 23:39

I made a couple programs to run on your mac to download the xml (minute) data and if you like you can convert it to a csv file for a spreadsheet. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=798553

Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/19/2009 - 11:54

Brent -- thanks for making the app!!! The auto-refresh and the bigger fonts (maybe decrease the size of the TED logo so you have more room for the text?) for me are probably the big ones. Here's a smaller one I noticed last night: when you refresh over 3G, which takes longer to do than over WiFi, the app seems to hang a bit, with no indication as to what it's doing. I'm wondering if you could add a little spinning icon (like Safari does) when the app has submitted the request to the server, and it's waiting to hear back? And the speedometer thing would be great to implement if it's not too difficult to do . . . .

Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/19/2009 - 05:34

Hey Everyone- I'm the developer of the iPhone app, TED5000. Thanks Chris for writing about it on your blog! All of this feedback is great! I already have made some improvements to the app including larger fonts (not submitted to app store yet). I was not aware of the history API that Nick mentioned, so that certainly opens up some doors. I've been doing development for quite some time, but am pretty new to Objective-C on the iPhone, so major changes may be slow. To help my prioritize what users want, I'd like to see what features you want listed out. From the sounds of it, an auto-refresh and larger font are pretty high up. Now that I have access to the history API, I will begin looking into adding historical data. Unfortunately there is not graphing libraries that I'm aware of on the iPhone, so I'm still researching how to do this. Some of the big goals I have for the app are to utilize the GPS and allow people to 'share' their information publicly so you can compare your consumption to others. Keep the ideas coming! As Mike D mentioned, it is not difficult to setup your router to allow you to connect to your TED Gateway outside of your local network. You need to connect to your router in your web browser. A standard router IP address is 192.168.1.1, however an easy way to find out is to look up your TED 5000 IP as mentioned above. Generally speaking, if your TED 5000 IP is XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX then your router IP will be XXX.XXX.XXX.1. Once you've connected to the router, you need to find where the Port Mapping is done. On most residential routers it will be under something like 'Applicatoin & Gaming'. You will need to provide the IP of the TED Gateway and specify an Internal port of 80 and an external port of 80. If you want to connect to TED externally on a non-standard http port where you will need to specify the port number with the IP Address (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:PORT) then specify some port (above 1000 is good) . Make sure to enable the new setting and save. Now you need to get your IP address from your service provider. In your router, there should be a 'Status' page. On that page, there will be an Internet IP Address. Use that address with the port number you specified for external port in your router and you should be set!. If you specified an external port of 80, you do not need to include the port number with the IP address. Hope that helps.

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/18/2009 - 16:41

Jasper -- Please keep us posted about this! I should also note that it is relatively trivial to access the TED5000 from outside your home network, either on the iPhone app or using a web browser. You need to know your IP address, and then open a hole in your firewall/router so that requests to the IP address of the TED are forwarded to the TED. If you have a dynamic IP address, you'll need a dynamic DNS service (there are free ones available on the Internet), however. I can provide more info specifically for the DIR-655 router if desired.

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/18/2009 - 16:19

I would love a hook into the TED database so i don't have to script my own way of pulling data out and storing it myself. It is nice to see a user made app out already. Wouldn't be surprised if the company makes an official app as they seem to be pretty savvy. i think some people commented on your previous post about the huge spikes in readings. Support told me they are sending me a new update to fix this that is newer than their website. Don't know anything more than that yet.

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/18/2009 - 16:06

I've been playing around with this, too, today. It's a great first app for the iPhone, although here's what I'd like to see: (1) Most importantly, auto-refresh. I'm thinking every 1-2-5-15-30-60-etc. seconds as configured by the user. (2) I'd also like alternative views of the data -- either larger fonts, or, better yet, a "speedometer" style display like the internal FootPrints software. The web address that you enter is also amenable to entering an alternative port. So, you can enter 192.168.x.y:port if you are using an alternative port. It should also be noted that until (unless?) the TED folks provide an API by which historical data stored on the gateway is accessible by third-party applications, there will not be any iPhone apps that provide more data than that which this app does. This is because right now, the gateway only exposes an API that provides real-time information, and also some other things like most recent hourly averages. Presumably, the idea is for third parties to monitor everything themselves to keep their own store of data, but this is impractical with the iPhone, because there's no way you'll be running the iPhone all the time. Also, another way to find your IP address is by logging onto your wireless router. Your router will give TED an IP address (which will remain the same all the time insofar as TED is plugged into all the time). Most routers allow you to see which IP addresses have been assigned to which devices. This is how I found my TED's IP address . . . .

Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/28/2009 - 20:49

I cannot seem to get the app to connect from outside the home, though I did port forwarding to port 1000 and linked it to my home ip, but still does not connect when I use the syntax http://myipaddy:1000 ... the app does work when I use the standard ip address from inside the network. Wonder what gives. I have done port forwarding on both my TIVO and VNC without problem...so I have some experience in making it work. My firewalls are disabled as well.

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/18/2009 - 22:43

Nick, that's good to know! How did you find that? I'm wondering if there are other "hidden" API's that we can access . . . .

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