British gas energy monitor

[Big Wal]

Hi All.
New boy first steps on the Navitron Forum.
I have a British gas electricity monitor about two years old and it is working OK.
My question is, on the back of the monitor it has a port for getting information to a computer does anyone know how to record this information IE software to install on IMAC. Gratefull follower.

[brackwell]

Interestingly mines only got the power socket.  Ken

[Big Wal]

 It's similar to the one on this Utube link
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gLvTz_r0YE&feature=related

[strutt]

If it's the same as mine it has an rj45 socket on the back and you will need to download the appropriate software from
http://www.currentcost.com/software-downloads.html

[EccentricAnomaly]

Have you got a lead to go with it?

I have one of those monitors with a USB to serial adapter lead to plug into the FCC 8P8C (often, somewhat incorrectly, called RJ45) connector on the back. I believe it's a 3.3 V one-directional serial connection which is not likely to work well with an RS-232 port of any sort.

A bit of web searching will throw up lots of different bits of software. The actual output of the box is quite simple; it just sends a fragment of XML every 6 seconds. Unfortunately, there seem to have been some gratuitous changes of the XML format between versions of the box.

I wrote some Python code to read and process the data a while back but got bored with it when I realised just how misleading the data can be - it only measures the current which is only proportional to power for simple resistive loads.

[Big Wal]

Thank you all for your suggestions will try them when I get Back from Scotland.