I want to set up a smart power strip to cut power to my home theater system when not in use. I saw a few smart power strips on Amazon (like this one) that offer integration with Alexa, IFTTT, etc., but I can’t find any of them in the list of officially supported components for Home Assistant. I also couldn’t find any info about an API for those devices, so it looks like any HA integration would have to be indirect. I did see a Xiaomi device in the HA docs, but it looks like that device will not work with US power outlets.
Is anyone aware of a smart power strip that works with HA? Alternatively, has anyone had success integrating one into their setup indirectly?
I thought about that and may wind up going that route. Individual socket control would be nice to, for example, kill power to the energy-hungry TV while still using the speakers to listen to music. I also felt weird about plugging all those devices into the surge suppressor, then passing that through a smart outlet. Not sure how much load those outlets are designed to handle, though I guess I could just look that up.
Most have a 15 or 20 amp rating (matches a standard plug). If you are pulling that kind of wattage you have to much plugged into the strip. Your getting into worrying about your home wiring past 15 amps.
That is 1200, 1800, or 2400 watt rating. I run my amp, a desktop computer, and TV and haven’t seen over 300 watts. Modern components would pull a lot less (LED TVs and class D amps).
Take a look at the broadlink RM3 mini if you don’t have ‘smart’ devices. I use it to power my TV and receiver on and off. Then using a smart plug I can monitor how much power is being used when I leave the house and turn them off.
Thank you! Yes, I started looking into the actual power ratings of my devices and it looks like I should be fine passing everything through a smart outlet. Guess I just had that picture in my mind from grade school of power strips plugged into other power strips with a big ‘X’ over it… But I was also thinking of a smart power strip because I was trying to avoid ever shutting off certain devices (e.g., XBOX 360, which does not handle power outages gracefully). I guess I’ll have to move those devices to another power supply.
I actually do have a Logitech Harmony remote set up which can turn off most of the devices, but I wanted to kill the power supply completely so they wouldn’t keep using power in standby mode.
Sounds like a smart outlet is my best bet for now. Thanks again for your help!
Interesting. I don’t have a transmitter, but I see there are lots of cheap DIY transmitters available for Arduino/RPi. My setup is on outdated desktop running Linux, though, so I’m not sure how easy/cheap it would be to add a transmitter. If you don’t mind me asking, what sorts of things do you have set up with your transmitter (assuming you have one set up)? If it can really expand what I’m able to do, it may be worth figuring out how to add it.
Personally, I have the Energenie Two Way PiMote on my Pi, that I use to control 3 of their switches, 3 of their trvs and 3 other light switches. But since you don’t have a Pi, this wouldn’t be much use to you.
The protocol for the Energenie 433MHz switches is pretty standard though, so I think most transmitters would work. I have built the OpenMQTTGateway project to decode the signals from the remote control, so I imagine it could transmit them as well.
I have programmed an energenie power strip to broadlink rm pro no problem. Used it for Christmas lights.
Having said that all my av equipment is controlled by 1 tp link smart switch. I have one extension for all the stuff I want to turn off attached to the tp link and another extension for the stuff I keep on like sky box etc. No problem with power draw
Nice! That project looks really interesting and I’ll definitely have to keep this option in mind! Regrettably, I’m not as tech-savvy as I’d like to be and I’m afraid of embarking on something that could take a substantial amount of time to figure out and configure. Long story short: my wife has soured on my foray into home automation after I spent one too many nights nerding out on my laptop… Better keep it simple for now! But seriously, it does look cool - thank you for the suggestion!
Just realized I probably misunderstood what @silvrr was getting at when he mentioned the Broadlink RM3. I wonder if I can achieve similar results with the Logitech Harmony. Sounds like I’ve got a bit more to think about.
I have a harmony hub as well. It’s great for powering stuff up from standby in the right sequence with little programming. I would always use that over an rm pro. It would truly take forever to program a broadlink.
The RM3 is just a IR emitter. It learns remote codes and can repeat them back on demand.
Im sure the Logitech implementation is a bit more advanced.
Using a power plug you can get the power draw from the strip. Using that info you can (in general) figure out what device(s) are on and turn them on/off as needed.
Something to think about with cutting the power to everything is that many devices have a default power on when power is restored setting. Some can be changed others cant. In the case where you only want to listen to the amplifier if you restore power to the switch everything may turn on.
I don’t own a harmony hub myself and maybe it does something magic I don’t know about. But powering up and shutting down devices in the right order with the touch of a button is one of the basic features of HA and can even be configured from the UI without editing any configuration files.
If setting this up in HA is still too much hassle for someone, I wouldn’t recommend using HA at all.
Of course, If I’d already own a harmony hub, i would integrate it in HA and continue to use it. But for someone already running a HA instance who just wants to turn some non-smart devices on or off via IR, buying a harmony hub instead of a RM3 would be a huge waste of money in my opinion (no offense ).
I completely agree and I did mention that if its simple stuff then the broadlink is fine. But harmony does more than just power stuff on in the right order with the right delays.
When you switch between activities it works out what to power off and what to keep on and also switches the remote to the correct one. ie when watching sky all the sky remote buttons work. Want to watch a movie? AV amp switches to the correct input, sky box turns off, tv stays on blu ray player turns on and the remote now works for the bluray player. All with correct delays. OK if you had a weekend spare you could maybe program all the scripts to switch between tv, netflix, amazon, sky, bluray, oh and music, but all the individual remotes as well?
Yes, I remember this “Activities” feature from a harmony one remote I used some years ago. Unfortunately it never worked reliably for me. I often had to use the assistant that was shown after an activity was selected to manually turn on and off devices, that didn’t catch the IR signal at the first try. Or when I accidentally hit the wrong activity.
I’m aware that this isn’t a fault of the device, as there is no way for the remote to detect reliably, that a device received the IR signal successfully. But to be honest, for me it was a nightmare to configure these activities with the (slow and often unresponsive) logitech harmony config tool. I had to carefully consider the order of commands and inserted delays to get them working in at least 8 out of 10 tries.
I eventually gave up on using the harmony one and replaced it with an arduino based IR blaster. While transmitting the IR signals is still unidirectional of course, I’m much more flexible with HA to integrate the IR commands with sensor data like wall socket current sensors or network sensors to actually get feedback from the devices, that the IR signal was received properly.
Clearly if you couldn’t get harmony to work very well then its never going to represent value for money. I did find initially positioning of the IR blasters in my AV cabinet was a bit tricky, but once I got the best position sussed it was all good.
I guess as with most things these days you tend to pay a premium for the convenience of having a device that does the hard work for you vs DIY and what works well for one person in one situation doesn’t work for others. I am pleased I have my harmony, not least that I can have my multitude of remotes put away, but I understand plenty of people may be quite happy to save the money and buy a broadlink instead. I myself toyed with the idea of the broadlink instead, but when I looked into it further the harmony looked a better for me at that time. (I have subsequently got 2 broadlink devices for other uses though and they are brilliant at what they do)
That’s what great about forums like this and others. Its much easier to see through the marketing blurb and get real peoples views to help you make better informed decisions.
Thank you, @ceh, this is exactly what I was looking for! My initial post was some time ago and I ultimately wound up simply running a conventional power strip through a single smart plug. Less control, but it works for my purposes (and is a fair amount cheaper to boot).
As to the Harmony discussion above, I already had a Logitech Harmony prior to setting anything up in Home Assistant. It’s true that setting things up in Harmony sucks, the app is awful, and it can be a challenge making sure things are timed correctly. That said, I still love my Harmony: having one, physical remote that can control everything I need it to is really nice and it plays well with HA, so I can still set up handy automation. I’m not sure if you can easily set up a physical remote with Broadlink, but for me it’s indispensable. I love having real buttons I can touch and memorize, rather than having to look down and adjust my eyes to a different screen every time I want to change the volume.
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