Beginner pointers please :)

Hi team,

I don’t yet have any experience with HA and what I’m asking for here is pointers in the right direction. I’ve had a look at the documentation but I don’t think I understand the HA terminology/architecture well enough to get started yet. Apologies… :slight_smile:

What I have
A Sonoff Basic (running Tasmota) and PZEM-004T monitoring the energy consumption of my EV charger.

A Shelly 1PM (running Tasmota) which is switching my immersion heater.

These are both showing up in the default HA dashboard and I can control the Shelly from there.

What I want to achieve
A card on my dashboard which shows an “is charging/isn’t charging” indicator dependent on how much current is flowing at the EV charger (I don’t know how to do this)

The immersion heater to come on when the car is charging, and go off when it isn’t charging (I think I know how to do this) except for between 2330 (plus or minus a random offset) and 0530 when it should always be on (I don’t know how to do this!)

(Background: I’m on Intelligent Octopus as my EV tariff, but I can’t use the Octopus Energy HA integration because it doesn’t work properly with the Ohme when the Ohme is controlling Intelligent Octopus.)

I am not asking for anyone to do this for me, but a steer in the right direction for the words/concepts I need to understand in order to move forwards.

Thanks so much for your time :slight_smile:

I have discovered helpers and binary sensor templates :partying_face:

Next step is automations I think!?

Exactly. For the time exception use a condition on the automation. For randomization, check in the forum as well. There a few threads on that.

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