How do I connect a P1 smart meter to Thinka?

Thinka Pro reads a smart meter with a P1 port (DSMR) and shows the whole house's electricity, gas and feed-in on the Energy Dashboard. The meter is connected under Settings → P1 Energy Monitor → Connection. There are two ways to reach it: with a cable into the Thinka, or over the network.

Before you start

  • A Thinka Pro (KNX or Z-Wave) on software 6.1 or newer. The P1 Energy Monitor is a Pro feature; a base Thinka shows it as an upgrade on the Energy Dashboard.
  • A meter whose P1 port sends plain, unencrypted telegrams. Thinka recognises the dialect from the meter itself: DSMR 4/5 and DSMR 2.2/3.0 (Netherlands), eMUCS-P1 (Belgium, Fluvius), Smarty (Luxembourg, unencrypted), DSMR 5 (Sweden) and EasyMeter Q3D (Germany). Meters that encrypt their P1 output, such as Austrian meters and the encrypted Luxembourg Smarty, are not supported.
  • In Belgium the user ports of a Fluvius digital meter are switched off by default. Activate the P1 port in the Fluvius customer portal (Mijn Fluvius) first; the meter stays silent until you do.

Option 1: cable

  1. Use a P1-to-USB cable: an RJ12 plug on the meter side and USB-A on the other. Cables built on an FTDI, CH340 or Prolific chip are recognised automatically.
  2. Plug the RJ12 end into the meter's P1 port and the USB end into a free USB port on the Thinka. The meter powers the cable; nothing else is needed.
  3. Open Settings → P1 Energy Monitor and under Connection choose Cable. Thinka shows the device it identified, normally /dev/tty-p1.
  4. Within a few seconds the status changes to Reading the smart meter and the Meter capabilities section fills in. A DSMR 5 meter sends a reading every second, a DSMR 4 meter every ten seconds.

Two kinds of cable are not identified automatically: cables built on a Silicon Labs CP210x chip (the same chip Z-Wave USB sticks use), and cables for a DSMR 2.2/3.0 meter, which runs its port at 9600 baud with 7 data bits and even parity instead of 115200 8N1. Contact support in those cases; the device path and serial settings can be set for you.

Option 2: network

Use this when the meter is too far from the Thinka for a cable. You need a device at the meter that forwards the raw P1 telegrams over a TCP port: a WiFi P1 dongle with a TCP or telnet ("raw") port, an ESP board running a serial-to-TCP bridge, or a Raspberry Pi running ser2net. A dongle that only offers a web page or a JSON API, without a raw TCP port, does not work.

  1. Install the bridge at the meter and note its IP address and the TCP port it forwards on. Give it a fixed address or a DHCP reservation in your router, so the address does not change. ser2net and most dongles use port 2001 by default.
  2. Open Settings → P1 Energy Monitor and under Connection choose Network.
  3. Enter the IP address or hostname and the port, and press Connect. Thinka first checks that something answers at that address and only then saves the setting.
  4. Within a few seconds the status changes to Reading the smart meter.

A serial P1 port can only be read by one program at a time, but most network bridges accept more than one reader, so Thinka can usually share the bridge with another system.

After connecting

  • Enter the rates from your energy contract under Your rates, so the cost estimates match your bill. Empty fields use the average rates of your country, which Thinka derives from the meter's dialect.
  • Older readings from your energy supplier can be imported from a CSV file, so the graphs go back further than the day Thinka was connected.
  • To stop reading the meter, choose No meter. The recorded history stays; it can be removed separately.

Troubleshooting

  • "no telegram since opening … ago": the port opened but the meter is silent. Check that the RJ12 plug is pushed fully into the meter, that the cable is a P1 cable and not a telephone cable, and in Belgium that the P1 port has been activated. A DSMR 2.2/3.0 meter needs the slower serial settings described above.
  • "Nothing answered at that address": the bridge did not accept the connection. The message says why. ECONNREFUSED means the address is right but nothing listens on that port; ENOTFOUND means the hostname cannot be resolved; EHOSTUNREACH or a timeout means the address is not reachable at all. Check the IP address and port, and that the bridge is powered and on the same network as the Thinka.
  • Rejected telegrams: a few are normal on a long or marginal cable; the checksum failed and the meter sends a new telegram a second later. A high share of rejected telegrams points to a poor cable or bridge.
  • The link drops and comes back: Thinka reopens the port by itself a few seconds after a cable is unplugged or a bridge restarts. No action is needed.
  • No gas reading: the Meter capabilities section shows what your meter reports. Gas only appears when a gas meter is coupled to the electricity meter over M-Bus; Swedish meters carry no gas at all.
  • The P1 tab is missing: the P1 Energy Monitor is part of Thinka Pro and needs software 6.1 or newer. Check the version and update channel under Settings → Thinka.
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