So, rather than keep meddling with the stuff they have (about $20K worth of stuff) I decided to get a tweet-a-watt kit from adafruit industries I blogged a few weeks ago when I built it.
After I built the stuff, I hit a brick wall trying to run the python software that you can download from the site. Somewhere along the line, I just couldn't get it to work. I made an appointment with Sean and Charlie hoping they could help me out, but yesterday I finally just hunkered down, set everything up, and pushed myself to get it working.
The problem was that I missed the step of unpackaging and storing simplejson in the same folder as the python scripts downloaded from the site. so after I got over that hurdle, we plugged the halogen lamp into the modded kill-a-watt- and for the first time (for me) I got data logging across a zigbee radio.
This whole exercize has taught me quite a bit about the hardware and the software behind all this zigbee stuff. I know how the radios pin out, and I understand quite a bit more about what it takes to get the software to interface with an actual computer.
Also, since I got a rig for carrying my stuff around, I should be able to make better progress moving forward.
