Brultech Green Eye Monitor (GEM) Setup

[kblagron]

I decided to add some pulse counters to my water usage, and always wanted to upgrade to the Brultech GEM which has pulse meter support, so I got a GEM last week and started bench testing it with the driver.  

CQC's documentation is a bit skimpy on what needs to be configured in order for the driver to work.  I put it in the test harness so I could figure out what was going on.  I purchased the wired ethernet version since I had a Cat5 wire from my power center back to my wiring closet where my router is.

Here are some comments:

• It took some time to get a static IP assigned.  You have to first set it as a dynamic DHCP IP address using their network utility.  Once you can access the GEM Setup with that dynamic address, then you can switch it to a static IP with the network utility.
  
• In the GEM Setup, go to Packet Send Menu and make these changes:
  

1. My unit already had real time status turned off (which CQC needs according to the driver docs.)  
   
2. You also need to change the Primary Packet Format to 1: Multi ECM-1240 Simulation.  The driver switches back and forth between ASCII and Binary, and I think having this set initially to Binary, which is what mine was set to, was what caused mine to not connect.   
   
3. In the Adv Menu, I changed the Idle Time to 30 seconds (As per the driver docs)
   

• You cannot be in the GEM Setup mode and get the driver to connect.  You must exit out of it.  This burned me a few times, as only one thing can connect to the GEM.  If I need to get in the GEM Setup, I pause the driver, then access it.  Log out of the setup and resume the driver to get it running again.
  

Once I did these items, the driver started right up and stayed connected.  Right now I have two energy monitors going (Main Panel and SubPanel).  I plan on adding more in the next few days.  I also ordered two pulse water meters and will hopefully get that installed soon.

Regards,
Blake