plmtools-imeter
I've packaged up a new release of the modified plmtools package for talking to the iMeter. I think the code has diverged from the base plmtools enough to warrant a rebranding, so I'm (uncreatively) naming the fork 'plmtools-imeter'. I've posted a page for the project over on the main site (but for the impatient among you, here's a direct link).
Improvements from the previous release include support for both Revision 1.1 and 1.15 iMeters (thanks to Erik Wile for his detective work regarding that issue) and a variety of other smaller improvements.
A bit over a week ago I presented my research group's recent work on building monitoring using home automation devices at the BuildSys 2011 workshop in Seattle. Our paper on this work ('Exploiting Home Automation Protocols for Load Monitoring in Smart Buildings') was facilitated in part by the plmtools-imeter package.
plmtools for the iMeter Solo and/or the GuruPlug
Update (11/10/2011): I've posted an updated version of the code that fixes the issue with the new 1.15 iMeters: see my more recent post.
Update (9/26/2011): Smarthome has come out with a new revision of the iMeter that breaks this utility -- the meter firmware seems to have changed, and the new one does not provide all the information of the old. To see if you have the old meter (that does work), look for a sticker on the back side of the iMeter. If you see a "V1.1", then you have the old one (good). If you see a "Rev. 1.15", then you have the new one (bad). I'm working on figuring out the 1.15 protocol to get this utility working again with the new ones.
One of my current research projects involves instrumenting a house with a lot of Insteon home-automation devices and collecting data from them. I've been using the very useful Linux plmtools utilities to talk to the Insteon devices programmatically. However, the plmtools suite has a few shortcomings for my purposes: one, the current release doesn't compile or run on ARM-based machines (such as the GuruPlugs I'm using) and two, it has no functionality for talking to the new Insteon power meter, the iMeter Solo. The iMeter Solo basically works exactly like a Kill-A-Watt meter, except that since it's an Insteon device it's possible to interface with it.
I've dealt with both of the above problems. I've fixed the ARM-specific problems in the code so it runs great on the GuruPlug, and I've added functionality for querying the current wattage level from an iMeter Solo. I imagine there are others who would like to use plmtools on ARM-based machines, and as far as I know there are no existing tools that allow you to query the iMeter from within Linux. Now, you can query the current watt draw reported by the iMeter using a simple 'insteon mydevice meter' command.
Also note that the iMeter Solo is frequently advertised alongside a special 'HouseLinc'-enabled version of the PLM that's required to use the HouseLinc software that can talk to the iMeter. This is unnecessary for my solution, which works just fine on a regular PLM.
You can download the modified plmtools here. See the included README for details both on how the base plmtools utilities work as well as how the added meter functionality works. I'm trying to get in touch with the original author of plmtools to see if I can get these changes integrated into a future release on SourceForge, but so far haven't had any luck.