Blog

Cerius has informed us (dabbler.dk) that they are strengthening the security of the MEP port. On May 6th, 2025, new meters will have their MEP port disabled as default. If you get a new meter and you need the MEP port, you will be able to request Cerius to activate it on their home page. …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters connected to Cerius (zip code 4000-4999 in Denmark) – action required”

Thanks to Reto (info@makerspace-reinach.ch) we might have a solution for a long standing bug. If you are having issues getting reliable readings from the meter/module and getting errors / Meter responses like these from the module: Typically from these requests: …then you know have an option to update the software. Make sure to study the …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – possible 0x0B / 0x0C bugfix?”

Today I got a bit of a surprise – without any warning my power distribution company changed my power meter from a NES Echelon meter to a Landis+Gyr E360 meter. This means that I unfortunately have no way of testing and working on new hardware/software for our Dabbler MEP interface. I hope someone else with …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – probably our final post on this topic”

Thanks to our friends at www.ustepper.com hardware to IoT enable your NES/Echelon meter is now available again. You can purchase it directly from their shop here: https://ustepper.com/shop/home/26-esp32-c3-dabbler-mep-interface.html Note, although this is a completely redesigned hardware based on a different ESP32 module (it uses the ESP32C3 and not the ESP32-WROOM-32 of our original module), we have …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – MEP interface modules is now available again from www.ustepper.com”

As you might have discovered we recently shut down our sales of MEP interface modules and kits. Our initial goals were to: As you might know we had (and still have) a hard time getting more people involved, but we have had some community contributions to the code and inspiration stories. To try to push …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – MEP interface modules will (hopefully) soon be for sale again”

We have merged a long standing pull request, so MQTT is now part of our main software. While here we did some long due cleanup of the headlines on the Dashboard page. This update consists of two files. Please update them both and in this order: You’ll find the files and documentation on how to …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – MQTT now part of the main software”

This is a quick entry to share that Andreas from Austria created a 3D printed enclosure for our MEP module. This makes it possible to install the MEP module outside the meter – on meters not having the Danish MEP drawer (i.e. Gen. 4 meters etc.) Andreas shared his work here: https://www.printables.com/model/369194-dabbler-mep-sw-esp32-case

Back in June 2022 Engelbert Horvat reached out to us to discuss a MEP solution for his Echelon/NES Smart Meter. Engelbert lives in Austria, so unfortunately our module is not a good solution for him. Although the MEP electrical connections and protocol is standardized in these meters, the MEP “drawer” our modules are designed for …

Continue reading “(Guest writer) Echelon/NES Smart Meter – FHEM integration in Austria”

…and Now for Something Completely Different… Some of you might recall that this blog is not limited to posts about Echelon/NES meters, and know it is actually for all kind of stuff Graves and I am dabbling with. Granted, lately it’s been mostly about our Echelon/NES project – but we have not stopped dabbling with …

Continue reading “PIPrint – A Free Direct Printing Solution for your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central”

Update as per 2023-03-30: We are out of PCBs and parts and are not planning to order any new ones. The Limited offer has now finally ended. It has been running FAR longer than we expected due to high demand – we were simply not able to catch up, and when we did, we had …

Continue reading “[Limited offer has now ended] Echelon/NES Smart Meters – MEP interfaces modules and kits”

It is with great pleasure we finally can announce the release of the following official OSGP Alliance documentation for OSGP Smart Meters (i.e. Echelon/NES Smart Meters): The Multipurpose Expansion Port (MEP) interface and protocol Optical interface and protocol You will find the PDF files in the Documentation repository at GitHub using this link: https://github.com/OSGP-Alliance-MEP-and-Optical. Thank you for …

Continue reading “[Breaking News] Echelon/NES Smart Meters – Documentation for MEP and Optical interfaces have been released on GitHub!”

Only one link today: https://github.com/OSGP-Alliance-MEP-and-Optical. Not there yet – but pretty close now 🙂

Our software fix for the (fake?) MAX3232 hardware issue seems to solve the issue completely. It is still a rough implementation in the software (using delays), so we’ll have to improve on that later on… It is probably not that big of an issue – because when a MAX3232 starts to behave, it seems it …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – dabbling the hardware v1.10 and v2.00”

Well, we warned you that software guys like us tend to come up with software solutions – even for hardware problems. As expected, no electronic engineers reached out to us with a solution for our (probably fake) MAX3232 issues, so we had to come up with a solution ourselves… That is off cause ok – …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – the software solution to a hardware issue”

This is another bonus entry on our blog in the Echelon/NES Smart Meters series. As we have mentioned before, it is sometimes hard to find time besides our regular jobs to dabble with this project. We have had a lot of interest in using the IR (Infrared) port on the Echelon/NES Smart Meters, and there …

Continue reading “(Guest writer) Echelon/NES Smart Meters – NES/ECHELON electrical meter connect to MQTT (Home Assistant) via IR”

This is a bonus entry on our blog in the Echelon/NES Smart Meters series. We have limited time and are devoting the sparse time we have on the hard- and software needed for the ESP32-MEP module. We are aware that other systems should be able to integrate to the solution, but we currently have no …

Continue reading “(Guest writer) Echelon/NES Smart Meters – Home Assistant integration”

Sorry it’s been some time since the last update – but please read the comment sections on the older entries – this project is still kicking, and we try to find time to at least answer the comments. Let us admit – we were worried… It seems NES went into some kind of radio silence …

Continue reading “(Long time no see) Echelon/NES Smart Meters – Draft document received!!”

As mentioned in our previous post, we f***ed up the connector to the meter… Moving on and with a few other hardware versions that never got produced, we ended up having a version 1.03 prototype where the connector is fixed and that kind of works most of the time in some meters: Note: jumper for …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – dabbling the hardware v1.01, v1.02 and v1.03”

Unfortunately we are still awaiting the release of the MEP protocol from NES (Networked Energy Services) as mentioned in previous blog entries. This will release us from the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) keeping all this a secret to you. …but while we wait, we could introduce you to our hardware prototype. In our first few attempts …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – dabbling the hardware v1.00”

As mentioned in our previous post, we we stuck. We had a 3rd party module which were clearly communicating with the meter through RS232. We knew the hardware interface, but we had no idea about the protocol… In pure desperation we opened a support ticket with the current owner of the technology – NES (Networked …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – NES to the rescue”

www.sommerhack.dk 2020 renewed our interest in communicating with our Echelon meter. During a session by Thomas Ljungberg Kristensen, WelcomeSecurity (https://www.welcomesecurity.net/) the different possibilities and the legislation was briefly covered and he inspired us to push harder to get some kind of access. If you are following these posts, can read Danish and have a Smart …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – the secret interface”

This will be a multi part post as we spent the last year in collecting all the pieces of the puzzle to connect to and get data from our Echelon Type 83331-3IAAD meter. Like others trying to do this, we hit a lot of “red tape”, lack of knowledge from involved partners, confusions and even …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – the beginning”

We have been quiet for a while. Not because we have not been tinkering, but because we’ve been very busy tinkering. To be precise we’ve been tinkering with our Echelon type 83331-3IAAD Smart Meters (power meters) and how to read out the consumption in a nice way… At the Danish gathering Sommerhack.dk 2021 we’ll be …

Continue reading “Echelon/NES Smart Meters – dabbler.dk rebooted”

A few weeks ago Erik Hougaard challenged me (or I challenged myself?) in comments on one of Erik’s YouTube videos to re-implement my C5Tris game for Microsoft Dynamics C5 in AL for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC). Off cause BC supports Java Script control add ins, but downloading a Java Script Tetris clone and …

Continue reading “Game On – or Game Over?”

Did you also wonder where the English and Danish (and probably other languages as well) help pages went? In Microsoft Dynamics Business Central 2019 wave 1 aka Business Central 14 (and possible newer versions) after the RTM-release in April 2019, the help simply does not work out-of-the-box anymore. It seems Microsoft are more focused on …

Continue reading “No online help in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central 2019 wave 1 (aka BC14) On-Premises”

Note: This work is based on the “Official Microsoft repository for SQL Server in Docker resources” found here: https://github.com/microsoft/mssql-docker/tree/master/windows/mssql-server-windows-developer Unfortunately this has not been updated to run Windows ServerCore 1890 and Microsoft SQL Server 2019 – so this is what this blog post is about… Note 2: We are only taking about minor changes here …

Continue reading “Running Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Developer Edition in a Docker Windows Container”

As described here, it can be kind of a Catch-22 to try to install Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central if you don’t have a local SQL Server, but want to use AzureSQL. Although I know the approach in the before mentioned Kine Info blog post works, I came across a easier solution during my struggles …

Continue reading “Installing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with AzureSQL”

“Introduction to the Modern client” is a comprehensive, well written and excellent book for readers wanting an introduction to the new Modern client for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Peik Bech-Andersen not only introduces the Modern client and its role centers. He also walks us through the different elements of a role center and give …

Continue reading “Review: Introduction to the Modern client”

Have you tried to rename a company (from the Companies page or from PowerShell (Rename-NAVCompany cmdlet) in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2018 and you get this error: “The task cannot be run because the user account that is assigned to run the task has been altered”, you are hit by a side effect of a new …

Continue reading “The task cannot be run because the user account that is assigned to run the task has been altered”

In the past I worked a lot with Microsoft Dynamics C5 and I just stumbled across an old quirk when you add database to a large existing database. You simply does not always get what you pay for. Registered Microsoft Dynamics C5 partners can find this information in Danish on PartnerSource following this link: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/denmark/pricing-ordering/pricing-ordering-news/C52012DatabaseIntervalsExplained …

Continue reading “2 + 2 <> 4″

So you think you are SUPER, but you are not able to log in to your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Center using the web client? (because of some access denied error). Well… This is not a very common error, because these needs to be true to trigger it: You are trying to login using the …

Continue reading “SUPER – but with no access to the role center?”

Have you tried to configure a Microsoft Dynamics Business Central 2019 Spring release (BC14) RTM with LoginName authentication, just to find that it did not work? You are right. You won’t be able to login to the Web- or Windows-client and will get errors in your event log like these: Server instance: BC140 Category: Runtime …

Continue reading “Cannot login to Microsoft Dynamics Business Central 2019 Spring release (BC14) RTM with LoginName authentication”

If you have been using the Dotnet ClickOnce technology to roll out your Dynamics NAV / 365 Business Central Windows Clients, you know it have some limitations (click here to read all about the limitations). But if you start pulling the ClickOnce technology apart, you will find that the client files are in fact present …

Continue reading “Playing around with the DynamicsNAV:// protocol handler”

Do you need some way of getting the Option value instead of the OptionML value from an Option field? It is not so straight forward as one should think, but with this simple function the work is done for you: PROCEDURE GetOptionValue@1000000002(TableId@1000000001 : Integer;FieldId@1000000000 : Integer;Value@1000000002 : Integer) : Text; VAR TableRef@1000000003 : RecordRef; FieldRef@1000000004 …

Continue reading “Option value != OptionML value”

Is your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Windows Client working, but your Web Client gets stuck with this picture just after log in? …and do you see events like these in the Windows eventviewser on the Server? (sorry – I know it is in Danish: “fejl” translates to “error” and “undtagelse” means “exception”) Der opstod …

Continue reading “Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central WebClient with no Role Center”

Have you ever tried to publish an app-file using the Publish-NavApp PowerShell Cmdlets on a on-premises Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and was stopped by errors like these: Publish-NAVApp : Extension compilation failed source/codeunits/Cod13653.PaymentExportManagement.al(4,27): error AL0185: Codeunit ‘Payment Export Mgt’ is missing source/codeunits/Cod13656.DataMigration.al(15,28): error AL0185: Codeunit ‘9002’ is missing source/codeunits/Cod13650.FIKManagement.al(54,24): error AL0185: Table ‘Payment Method’ …

Continue reading “Publish-NAVApp : Extension compilation failed”

No, this is not an error in WordPress on this server – “Bad Request – Error in query syntax.” is in fact the intended subject for this Blog post :-). If you are running OData WebServices towards you Microsoft Dynamics NAV or 365 Business Central (DBC) and you get this error – and you have …

Continue reading “Bad Request – Error in query syntax.”

Hi, As mentioned here, my internet service provider (ISP, Eniig) has announced that they will not provide a SMTP relay host (outgoing Simple Mail Transfer Protocol relay), and on top of that they earlier stated that they will not even setup reverse DNS on my fixed IP. They recommended smtp.dk and it has worked flawlessly …

Continue reading “Sendmail/smart host – this time with Microsoft Azure and SendGrid.com”

If you are setting up Single-Sign-On (SSO) for Dynamics 365 Business Central (DBC) and you are only able to authenticate users local to the Azure Active Directory (i.e. non Guest or “External Azure Active Directory” users), then you might have stumbled across the same error as me. The error manifests itself by allowing you to …

Continue reading ““External Azure Active Directory” users and Single-Sign-On in Dynamics 365 Business Central”

Are you messing with ultra low power esp32 code and have tried to setup the ulptool example from duff2013s GitHub in Arduino IDE v1.8.9 with Espressif Systems esp32 v1.0.2? Maybe you got a lot of strange compile errors like these? Traceback (most recent call last): File “C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\esp32\tools\ulptool\src/esp32ulp_build_recipe.py”, line 506, in main(sys.argv[1:]) File “C:\Users\ …

Continue reading “Arduino IDE v1.8.9, esp32 v1.0.2 and ulptool v2.3.0”

If you get this error when you try to preview a report in Dynamics 365 Business Central: An error occurred while trying to display the report. …your firewall may be to restrictive. A symptom of the same error is if you hit the Print button instead of the Preview button, and the preview during printer …

Continue reading “DBC: “An error occurred while trying to display the report.””

After having a Single-Sign-On (towards Azure Active Directory)/Multi-Tenancy setup running on Dynamics NAV 2018 for some time, I tried to create the same setup with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2018 fall release. And to my surprise it failed with this error just after logging in: “The value for the WSFederationLoginEndpoint configuration settings cannot be …

Continue reading “Broken Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Single-Sign-On with Multi-Tenancy setup”

October 2018 release (1.29) for Visual Studio Code was just released, but unfortunately it breaks the possibility to publish AL extensions to your Dynamcs NAV / 365 Business Central. Don’t blame the guys behind Visual Studio Code, this one is probably on the AL extension guys. Only solution i know is to downgrade Visual Studio …

Continue reading “Broken AL in Visual Studio Code October 2018 release (1.29)”

If you run a Danish Dynamics NAV and get objects from outside Denmark, you might experience the Danish letter ø/Ø beeing replaced by ¢/¥ (the sign for Cent and Yen). The fix? Simply export all your objects as text, run them through the following powershell and import them again. (((Get-Content -encoding Oem “InFile.txt”) -replace ([char]8250),([char]251)) …

Continue reading “Cent and Yen in Dynamics NAV 2018”

For readers not knowing what FUBAR is, please see Wikipedia. If you Dynamics NAV 2018 service will not start (or actually shuts down immediately when you try to start it), and you get something like this in your Windows Event Viewer (App Name, object ID and/or Name can probably be different ones): Message: <ii>An error …

Continue reading “My Dynamics NAV App is FUBAR (updated 2018-06-22 with new solution)”

Do you have a defective / non working Commodore 64 breadbin? I probably want it! Make me an offer on gert@dabbler.dk and state if you want to sell it or swap it for this working one (you will have to pay my costs in parts and shipping – but not my time) 🙂   Purchased …

Continue reading “Commodore 64 s/n U.K.B1717794 Repair Log (Work In Progress)”

Do you have a defective / non working Commodore 64 breadbin? I probably want it! Make me an offer on gert@dabbler.dk and state if you want to sell it or swap it for this working one (you will have to pay my costs in parts and shipping – but not my time) 🙂   Purchased …

Continue reading “Commodore 64 s/n U.K.B1309074 Repair Log (Work In Progress)”

If you are running your Microsoft Dynamics C5 or Microsoft Concorde XAL program files off a SMB1.x share, and your client is running Microsoft Windows 10, your C5/XAL might stop working if you upgrade your Windows 10 to build 1803. This is really a “far out” bug, in build 1803 Microsoft apparently strengthened some security …

Continue reading ““SQL Server does not exist or access denied” using Windows 10, build 1803″

In Dynamics NAV events are also fired on temporary records – this is really a confusing design and can trigger various, hard to debug, but rather serious issues. On one customer running NAV 2018 CU1, user group memberships was cleared randomly. We did’nt know exactly when, but in the end one of my Indian colleagues …

Continue reading “Even Microsoft gets this wrong :-)”

Hi, My internet service provider (ISP, Eniig) has announced that they will no longer provide a SMTP relay host (outgoing Simple Mail Transfer Protocol relay), and on top of that they earlier they stated that they will not setup reverse DNS on my fixed IP – so with these two (really bad) decisions in mind, …

Continue reading “Sendmail/smart host with mysmtp.eu/smtp.dk”

Unfortunately I did’nt win Jan Betas Commodore 64 Cartridge give away, so I had to build my own. And why not take it to the next level: Winbound W27C512-45Z EEPROMs 10 pcs bought on www.e-bay.com from a Top-rated seller. They were bought as used, but working. They shipped in 3 tubes, 2*4 pcs and 1*2 …

Continue reading “A Commodore 64 Diagnostic Cartridge on Steroids”

Do you have a defective / non working Commodore 64 breadbin? I probably want it! Make me an offer on gert@dabbler.dk and state if you want to sell it or swap it for this working one (you will have to pay my costs in parts and shipping – but not my time) 🙂   Purchased 8th …

Continue reading “Commodore 64 s/n U.K.B1697889 Repair Log”

If you got a cheap Chinese Picture Frame, you have probably noticed that half your pictures are upside-down, or rotated left or right. It happens even if the pictures are shown correctly on your computer, so if you got loads of pictures on your frame, it can be quite a hassle to figure out which …

Continue reading “Annoying non-rotating picture frame”