schmidt.florian
9eb3f7d53c
Adds the button, plus POST /api/v1/system/update for driving it from Home Assistant or curl. Both pull the latest source, rebuild and restart the service. The gating is the substance of this change. The updater builds whatever is on the branch and the LXC runs MeterVault as root, so triggering it is root-equivalent on that host, and the web UI has no login — "reachable from the dashboard" alone would mean any device on the network could take the machine. Three independent conditions must hold before anything runs: the operator set MeterVault__AllowInAppUpdate, at least one API key is configured, and the caller presented one, compared in constant time so retries cannot time out the key. AllowAnonymousApi cannot reach it. That flag opens reads, and opening reads must not open root, so the endpoint checks the presented key itself rather than relying on the shared group filter that honours it. Availability is re-checked inside LaunchAsync rather than trusting the caller to have done so. The UI button asks for the key every time instead of remembering it: with no login, a browser left open on the dashboard would otherwise be a standing permission to execute code on the host. The key is cleared from component state immediately, and a wrong key and a keyless deployment give the same message so an unauthenticated caller cannot tell them apart. Launched detached through systemd-run: the updater restarts the service, so a child process would be killed part-way through, leaving the app down with a half-published build. --collect reaps the transient unit so a later update is not blocked by the remains of the previous one. Off by default, and where there is no /usr/bin/update — a container, a dev box — it reports that rather than half-running something. Tests pin every refusal, including through the real HTTP pipeline; none of them launch anything. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01V6joyergfvVLFEizH1hJLd
MeterVault
A self-hosted, local-first energy & utility metering platform. MeterVault pulls meter data from Home Assistant, Tasmota and raw MQTT on a schedule, stores every reading timestamped and immutable, normalizes it into consumption, and turns it into cost dashboards. Energy types (electricity, water, heating oil, gas, district heat, …) and meters are user-defined — nothing is hardcoded.
Successor to a hand-maintained Energiebilanz spreadsheet. See docs/SDD.md for the
full design.
Features
- Automatic ingestion from MQTT/Tasmota (persistent subscriptions) and Home Assistant (REST poll or push), plus manual entry, a REST push API, and CSV import.
- Immutable raw readings on a TimescaleDB hypertable; a normalized, append-only consumption layer on top — reproducible, auditable.
- Seven measurement modes (cumulative/generation registers, burner runtime, tank/consumable, direct delta, instant rate, virtual). Handles meter swaps, counter resets, tank dip-sticks with calibration, and virtual meters defined by an expression (PV self-consumption, savings, net).
- Tariff engine with time-ranged price history (unit/base/feed-in), scoped global / per type / per meter; cost categories decoupled from energy types; meterless manual costs.
- Continuous aggregates (daily/monthly/yearly, local timezone) so dashboards never scan raw.
- Dashboard: cost KPIs with period-over-period deltas, "what costs most", a "what cost more/ less" difference view, trends, a PV/Solar panel (generation, self-consumption, autarky %, savings), an oil/consumable panel (tank gauge, deliveries, burner runtime, effective L/h, forecast-to-empty) and a per-meter detail view (raw readings, consumption, sources, tariff timeline, events), one-click reference-data load, CSV dry-run.
- Per-energy-type flow pages (Electricity, Water, …): a Sankey diagram of the meter chain — a downstream meter is a subsection of an upstream one (main → car, pool, garden, …), arrow thickness ∝ amount, with an auto-computed "Other/unmetered" remainder. Meters can have several upstreams (a merge, e.g. grid + solar → house).
- Admin UI: full create/edit/delete for energy types, meters (with consumption recompute on mode/baseline change, and cycle-safe upstream-meter wiring), ingest sources, tariffs, cost categories, and MQTT/Home-Assistant connectors; a "Test connection" for Home Assistant; effective-settings view.
- REST API + OpenAPI/Swagger, API-key auth, reverse-proxy trust (Authelia/Traefik).
- JSON config export/import for portability; Docker Compose + multi-arch image.
Quick start (Docker)
docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml up -d
# open http://localhost:8760 → Import → "Load reference data" for a populated demo
# ...or start pre-populated: METERVAULT_SEED=true docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml up -d
# API docs at http://localhost:8760/swagger
Quick start (Proxmox VE LXC)
A community-scripts–style installer builds a self-contained LXC (Debian + PostgreSQL/TimescaleDB + the app as a systemd service). Run on the Proxmox host:
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://git.finalfactory.de/FinalFactory/MeterVault/raw/branch/master/deploy/ct/metervault.sh)"
It asks the standard container questions, optionally loads the demo dataset, and prints the URL
(http://<ct-ip>:8760) plus the generated DB password. Re-run update inside the container to pull
the latest source and rebuild. It builds from this public Gitea repo (there is no prebuilt tarball —
releases ship as a container image). See deploy/ct/metervault.sh and
deploy/install/metervault-install.sh.
Configuration is via environment variables (Section__Key double-underscore mapping), e.g.:
| Variable | Purpose |
|---|---|
ConnectionStrings__Default |
PostgreSQL/Timescale connection string |
MeterVault__TimeZone |
Local timezone for buckets/display (default Europe/Berlin) |
MeterVault__ApiKeys__0 |
An API key accepted on the X-Api-Key header |
MeterVault__AllowAnonymousApi |
true to open the REST API without a key (trusted LAN only) |
MeterVault__ReverseProxyTrust |
true to honour X-Forwarded-User behind an auth proxy |
MeterVault__EnableLiveIngestion |
false to disable the MQTT/HA workers |
MeterVault__SeedReferenceData |
true to load the bundled demo dataset on first start (idempotent) |
MeterVault__DataProtectionKeyPath |
Where the key ring for UI-entered connector secrets lives (default /var/lib/metervault/keys) |
MeterVault__UpdateCheckEnabled |
false to stop the dashboard checking for a newer release |
MeterVault__AllowInAppUpdate |
true to allow updates triggered from the UI/API — grants root-equivalent access to anyone with an API key; see below |
MeterVault__UpdateCheckUrl |
Tag listing consulted by that check (repoint at a fork; blank also disables it) |
The REST API is closed by default: with no ApiKeys configured and AllowAnonymousApi off, it
returns 401. Set at least one API key (or open it explicitly for a trusted network).
The web UI has no authentication. There is no login: anything that can reach the port can read and change everything, including connectors and their stored secrets. Put it behind a reverse proxy with auth (Authelia, Traefik forward-auth, …) —
MeterVault__ReverseProxyTrustthen honours the user header — or keep it on a trusted network.
The dashboard compares the running build against the newest tag in the source repository and shows a
banner when it is behind. That is a plain GET of a public tag list — nothing about the instance is
sent — cached for six hours, and it never blocks or fails a page render. Turn it off with
MeterVault__UpdateCheckEnabled=false.
Updating from the UI (opt-in)
MeterVault__AllowInAppUpdate=true adds an Update now button to that banner, and a
POST /api/v1/system/update endpoint for scripting it from Home Assistant or curl:
curl -X POST http://metervault:8760/api/v1/system/update -H "X-Api-Key: $METERVAULT_API_KEY"
Both pull the latest source, rebuild, and restart the service — a few minutes during which MeterVault is unavailable. Readings are untouched; ingestion resumes on restart. LXC only: containers are replaced by pulling a new image, and the endpoint reports that rather than pretending.
Understand what this grants before enabling it. The updater builds whatever is on the branch, and the LXC runs MeterVault as root — so a valid API key becomes arbitrary code execution on that host. Three things must all hold before anything runs: the opt-in above, at least one configured API key, and a caller presenting one. In particular
MeterVault__AllowAnonymousApican never reach it — opening reads must not open root — and the UI button asks for the key every time rather than remembering it, because the UI itself has no login. Leave this off unless the UI is behind an authenticating proxy or on a network you fully trust.
Secrets (broker/HA tokens) are never stored in the database as plaintext. Each connector picks
one of two forms: the name of an environment variable, resolved at runtime, or the secret typed
into the admin UI and encrypted at rest under the data-protection key ring. Either way a pg_dump
or JSON export carries nothing usable.
Keep the key ring on persistent storage outside the app directory — the default
/var/lib/metervault/keys survives an LXC update, and the Compose file mounts a named volume for it.
Lose it and every UI-entered secret must be re-entered. The key ring is on disk, so this protects
against leaked database content, not against an attacker who already has the host; that is the same
trust boundary an environment variable has.
Pushing readings (Home Assistant)
curl -X POST http://localhost:8760/api/v1/readings \
-H "X-Api-Key: $METERVAULT_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '[{"meterId": 1, "time": "2026-01-01T12:00:00Z", "value": 47200}]'
See docs/wiring.md for wiring up Tasmota, MQTT and Home Assistant.
Development
dotnet build
dotnet test # integration tests spin a TimescaleDB via Testcontainers (needs Docker)
dotnet test tests/Core.Tests # fast unit tests, no Docker
dotnet run --project src/App
Architecture, project layout and conventions live in CLAUDE.md.
Releasing
Edit the VERSION file on master; Gitea Actions tags vX.Y.Z and builds/pushes a
multi-arch image to the Gitea container registry (.gitea/workflows/). Locally:
pwsh deploy/build-and-push.ps1 -Registry git.finalfactory.de -Image finalfactory/metervault -Push.
Requires a Docker-capable act_runner; the image build itself is self-contained.
License
Not yet chosen (see SDD §14). Add a LICENSE before the first public tag.