Just a quick update. I got it to pair first go using an iPhone. Its not playing nicely with local tuya which is a shame. Using the tuya app I can turn it on and off and it changes state in the local tuya intergration, but trying to control it with local tuya doesnt work and always seems to be unavalible.
I have a fair few Tuya devices that show intermittently unavailable in Local Tuya, but will show available in the Tuya integration. As a work around I list both Local and Cloud entities in automations or Node Red and put repeats in place to ensure they get the on or off signal.
Yeah, thats what I was thinking. 
Personally I swapped from LocalTuya to TuyaLocal a while back. It seems to me that TuyaLocal has more stable connectivity, but is not as feature rich.
I swapped all but one of my Arlec PC191HA power switches to ESPHome, and would love to swap my other two tuya devices to ESPHome and get rid of Tuya alltogether. Unfortunately Tuya devices are cheap and easily available
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You can still buy Tuya devices just make sure that they are not Tuya WiFi as they are the ones that give the most headaches in these situations where we want full local control, when they are the zigbee versions they can be used stand alone without their apps and cloud services.
Hey all. I’ve got a hot water system that’s connected to my fusebox with a timer on it. I’m not very electrical, but it kinda looks like this:
The idea is that we have it linked up to our electricity between 10-3 so it’ll use power from our solar system, but if it’s too cloudy/whatever, it’ll just be powered with normal electricity. The other day was the first time we’ve ever run out of hot water since moving here (we DID use a lot of water that day, and knew we used a lot, so we weren’t surprised that it happened), but we did have to go and manually turn on the timer earlier than usual so it would start up and heat our water for us.
Is there something that’s HA compatible that would work in a similar way with the timer, but then also have a button in HA I could press if I need to manually turn it on if we ever think we’re using a lot of water so we don’t run out of hot water again?
Thanks in advanced!
If it was me I would go ‘all-in’ with HA and wire a relay / contactor in place of the timer and get ESPhome and HA to control the whole thing. With ESPhome you could still have a physical button for local control if you wanted.
That sounds pretty good - how would I go about that? Like what would I need to tell the electrician when they come around to get things installed, and what would I need to get beforehand to make it all happen? ESPhome sounds like it might be the way since it can be locally controlled, but what’s the reliability of it? Does it matter how much power the hot water system draws? Sorry if these are simple questions, I don’t know anything when it comes to this type of stuff
Get the sparky to install one of these (or similar) in place of the timer. This will fit in the same space so won’t be any trouble. By getting one with a 12V dc coil you can then have the coil wired out to a box next to your meterbox and it will only have a safe extra low voltage in it which you can then play with yourself without needing a sparky.
Then you would also need an ESP and a small relay to control the 12V to the contactor. If you get a 240Vac to 12V dc power supply (only needs to be small) wired in to provide 12V dc to your ESP control box you then also need 5Vdc for the ESP itself. Jaycar actually have a nice power supply that will handle both of these for you. Although you could also just use a 12V supply and a small convertor which can also be purchased even cheaper from AliExpress if you can wait. Also need an ESP, I would get an ESP32 so it can double as a Bluetooth Proxy.
For me it’s been great. I’ve had it controlling my bore pump and irrigation in a similar manner to what you would do for your hot water for a number of years now, no troubles at all.
The above contactor would be more than enough but your sparky could check the hot water unit. Or, just look at what size circuit breaker currently feeds it… less than 25A, you are good with the above.
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Amazing, this is so much good info! I’ll do some digging - I’ve already got some ESP32s sitting around for other projects - I’m not very good at soldering so they’re waiting for me to get something small to practice on so I don’t accidentally damage them! Maybe I’ll put one aside for this project for next time we get a sparky out.
Thanks again so much!
Another option is to get something like a Shelly switch installed in place of the existing timer. You can then have power monitoring included but given that a hot water heater is purely resistive, this can easily be calculated based on run time anyway.
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Ah, a shelly would be able to do that? We’ve already got a bunch of shelly relays in for our lights and love them, especially since they’re local. I take it we’d need something a bit more beefy than the standard relay 1 that we got?
You could make it neat and use a Shelly din mounted relay control the higher capacity contactor.
No power monitoring as it would only tell you what the contractor is drawing not the circuit.
I am going to do something similar with the Shelly pro devices in my new build to better control the circuits in blackout mode to preserve battery based on remaining charge.
I plan on having some manual switches beside the sub board to provide direct control / override of the Shelly just in case the automations are down.
For you water heater you could make a momentary “boost” button using the Shelly internal automation control.
That’s a pretty good deal. As long as the water heater load is less than 16A that would be the way to go just using it directly without a contactor.
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That does sound like a way to do it. So, just to confirm because it’s still early that just replaces the fuse I’ve got, right? Or does it sit somewhere else in the box? But then all I need is to set a timer automation, maybe with some kind of backup to make sure it works? And if we ever need a boost I can press a button and have it boost for x time to get some more water heated for us if we ever need it again
No. You still need a circuit protective device: a fuse or circuit breaker before the Shelly.
This would replace the existing timer unit that you had a photo of earlier (similar I know not the exact one)
Exactly.
I was at my sisters the other day and noticed an android tablet on the wall for their HVAC. It was super clean. Give the tablet a quarter turn and it popped off to reveal this picture. Has anyone seen these for sale?
It’s from this company https://www.advantageair.com.au/
Ive been searching around on ebay and aliexpress but cant seem to find anything similar.
Its a POE wireless wall mounted charger. The puck on the back is stuck on and slots into a reciever in the wall. I should have got more photos
They pop up on Facebook marketplace a reasonable amount. Just do a search at each capital city 500km radius. I am unsure how customisable for home assistant it would be?
These are the ones I have seen on Facebook. AirTouch 5 - Smart Air Conditioning & Zoning - WiFi & App Control
Just buy one of these LinknLink iSG: The Next Generation All-in-One Super Smart Home Gateway
Or these https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006660242013.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller.1.7fecUVGXUVGX9x&gps-id=pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller&scm=1007.40000.327270.0&scm_id=1007.40000.327270.0&scm-url=1007.40000.327270.0&pvid=2317fcec-22fb-4ce8-9e1f-ca9703a03d3c&_t=gps-id:pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller,scm-url:1007.40000.327270.0,pvid:2317fcec-22fb-4ce8-9e1f-ca9703a03d3c,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238109%231935&pdp_npi=4%40dis!AUD!860.55!481.91!!!4092.00!2291.52!%40210321dc17183226713247176e2ca0!12000037948452452!rec!AU!3413029910!&utparam-url=scene%3ApcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller|query_from%3A
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006660242013.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller.1.7fecUVGXUVGX9x&gps-id=pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller&scm=1007.40000.327270.0&scm_id=1007.40000.327270.0&scm-url=1007.40000.327270.0&pvid=2317fcec-22fb-4ce8-9e1f-ca9703a03d3c&_t=gps-id:pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller,scm-url:1007.40000.327270.0,pvid:2317fcec-22fb-4ce8-9e1f-ca9703a03d3c,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238109%231935&pdp_npi=4%40dis!AUD!860.55!481.91!!!4092.00!2291.52!%40210321dc17183226713247176e2ca0!12000037948452452!rec!AU!3413029910!&utparam-url=scene%3ApcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller|query_from%3A
Google comes up with a few similar PoE wireless chargers. Not that exact one but close enough to do the same job.
I could but these pucks are basically wireless chargers for tablets. A tablet would be far suprior and easy upgradeable in the future. The part you can see in the picture is stuck to the back of a 8 inch tablet