When you're away from home and out of Bluetooth range, your Powerpal will record data at your meter and your Powerpal app will sync up when you get home. Powerpal can save 60 days of usage so you'll never miss out on historical data even when you get back from a long holiday.
If you want to keep an eye on how your home is using energy during the day while you're at work it's possible to connect a second app to your Powerpal to relay data to your main phone while you're out of range.
While only one device can be directly connected to Powerpal at a time (this is a limitation of the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol) all data is synced from the connected device to the cloud. This means it is possible to leave one device at home (such as a tablet) that is connected to your Powerpal and view your energy data on another device (such as your phone) while you are away from home via the cloud.
In order to set this up you can use the following process:
If the user has installed the Powerpal application on more than one device, It is recommended to uninstall the application from all mobile devices. It will avoid confusion to process the below steps.
1) Download an application to Phone 1 and pair it with Powerpal.
2) Once you have done pairing with Phone 1, turn off the Phone 1 Bluetooth now.
3) Download an application on Phone 2.
4) Pair with Phone 2.
5) Once you have done pairing with phone 2 (Keep connected with the Powerpal) you can open an application from phone 1 (Please make sure Bluetooth is turned off and have an active internet connection).
Now you can see readings from the cloud.
When more than one device is in Bluetooth range of your Powerpal they will "fight" for the direct connection and the device that loses the fight will fetch its data from the cloud instead.
Note that in order to preserve the battery life on the directly connected device data is batched and sent to the cloud in intervals (every 1 minute if the app is running in the foreground, every 15 minutes if running in the background). So when viewing data from the cloud you may find it is slightly delayed compared to viewing on a directly connected device. For certain tariff types, cloud data may be delayed up to 30 minutes until electricity networking pricing is finalised.
If you are searching for a low cost "hub" to relay the energy data from your Powerpal to the cloud (or to act as an always-on display) then why not raid your "old phone drawer" and use the Powerpal app to breathe new life into an old handset? Alternatively, we've had reports that the budget Lenovo Tab E7 works well, and is available from most major electronics stores.