Successfully reverse engineered the cloud bound 15€ OBI Energy Tracker to get it fully on local setup
Either by using it via an custom ESP32 AP or by getting the stock AP to connect to your server🥳
Hack Video
https://youtu.be/2jMEaRuSJ18
German howto video
https://youtu.be/U4Vvf0kHnEk
Added Home Assistant Auto Discovery to the MQTT Client of the the Custom ESP32 Gateway which allows for a simple integration🥳
Jul 3, 2026, 6:40 PM@Atc1441 na toll, jetzt habe ich den dusseligen Werbejingle im Kopf 😹 Alles in OBI... aaaah...
@Atc1441 what are your experiences with the update intervals?
I used a Xiao Esp32s3 with SX1262 radio, received already data from the emeter but it's very sporadic and not every x seconds, event in close proximity.
@RoXXoR It was received quite consisted by the custom Gateway I used, would still expect it to be loosing packages every now and then.
The latest custom firmware does also allow to be flashed on the Stock OBI Gateway via the cloud overtake so no extra hardware is needed.
@Atc1441 thanks. I don't have a Obi account yet, and try to avoid it for now :-)
I ran my tests again with a heltec as gateway and here same results.
Thus, I think it's the reader itself. I still have FW 32 on it since the original gateway is still in the box.
Will try to update it.
@RoXXoR Did just release a newer version for the AP which lets the LoRa modul use more power.
As for the OBI Account you can just use "some" values for the registration and just request the TEA Key and go one without anything further OBI related^^
@Atc1441 I was asking myself if that is the device that is actually manufactured by the folks who did powerfox powermeter ?
@eugenpirogoff unsure, as far as it looks this is a complete custom device made by SUMEC for OBI
@Atc1441 seems to be too weak for some of the Logarex meters, according to the compat list. Do you know of any hacks that will make it work regardless or does that indeed require waiting for a newer hardware revision?
@danimo unfortunately OBI told me only v2 Hardware will fix it. A stronger transmitter is needed. A Hardware hack could fix it but is out of my scope
@Atc1441 let's hope it's still hackable 🙏
Jul 5, 2026, 4:39 PM@Atc1441 congrats!
did something similar with my air purifier after realising it comes with an esp32 :D
Jul 5, 2026, 6:47 PM@Atc1441 Very impressive. Immediately had to order one. How is the power use like? Especially interested in the serial read and transmission period as I just started building a custom reader with Zigbee connectivity. Went with a Xiao MG24 base because that was one of the few available boards with a chip I found that can handle serial without waking up the whole chip and 9600 baud is slooooow. Might've been premature optimization though considering radio power requirements 😂
@hacst the power usage is not perfect on the OBI reader. So any optimisation makes sense.
Around only 2 Month battery runtime with 4 second report interval
Jul 5, 2026, 7:07 PM@Atc1441 Their FAQ states two years estimated battery life. So extrapolating the default is a read every minute or so? Iirc in the video you mentioned mqtt messages every 15 seconds but I guess that was already customized then? Thanks for documenting all of this so well btw., really appreciated.
@hacst yeah the very first default is 300 seconds period. Not sure what is actually set after installation. The Custom Firmware allows to set this from 4 to 300 seconds