As promised - an update.
I spent best part of a week on and off, tying to get to grips with PERL. I found it quite hard learning a completely new language when the only resource I have is a mate on the end of a phone occasionally and the internet. Especially when he got extremely engaged with it and was streets ahead of me - it re-kindled his imagination and he's found it a thoroughly enjoyable project.
Whereas I was struggling to get even fairly simple stuff going (though it makes it most satisfying when something does work!!).
My logic was OK but implementing it was hard going. And anyway I now have a short span of attention and something else shiny came along. I got out my Raspberry Pi again to make a security camera (successfully - motion detection, emails of activation, files retained on NAS etc!!).
This was partly because during my training stints with my mate I had actually got the raw data I wanted from my electricity supplier so really it's just a matter of keeping it up to date. Also he has now progressed way beyond what I considered a requirement, in that he is producing graph of usage plotted against cost and all sorts. So why would I re-invest the wheel?
Lazy, that's me! :-) it did spark an interest again and I do have another related project - to use a bit of SQL to extract my solar generation and so I can look at it against my electricity usage. Also to extract my gas usage from teh supplier, though that is less interesting.
My mate has also gone with Octopus more or less so he has his own data to fiddle with - he's really got the bug! On a sales note, they are one of the cheaper ones and if anyone wants to swap to them ask me as we both get £50.
So again, thanks for your help. I'll probably come back to this stuff sometime in the future!!
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Using REST APIs new