I have been struggling with using Aqara Zigbee flood sensors under the shower drain cover to detect when a shower is running.
In my use case, the sensor ends up sitting in water for some time, and dries out by itself, not because someone comes to fix the leak. I find the Aqara sensors show WET for a very long time post activation, and I think in fact stop reporting entirely, since home assistant shows a last updated time many hours ago. A quick reset of the sensor makes it report dry again (even without picking it up or moving it), and then it triggers next time it gets wet but again doesn’t reset. Very annoying.
I tried raising the sensor slightly on rubber feet to allow it to dry out faster but that didn’t seem to help, and I guess the issue is more a firmware / connectivity problem. The drain cover is stainless steel so in case that was blocking the signal I replaced them with a 3D printed cover in PLA. No change.
What solution would / do you use to detect whether a shower is running?
I’m thinking about plumbing in a Sonoff irrigation controller. Not only would it tell when the shower is in use but, also how much water is used. I could also turn the shower on to heat up without getting in.
I’m not sure if this is a good idea and I will also need to find suitable conectors to adapt the different fitting sizes.
It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. What exactly you need to know.
There are already many good suggestions here, like humidity sensor, that would work in many cases. But it doesn’t give you information, when shower is done. Flow meter or acoustic sensor or optical sensor can do it, but is that what you really need??
Decibel sensor and a shutoff valve on the hot water should do the trick.
Close off the hot water. If someone is having a shower, their screams will trigger the decibel sensor
Joking apart, since you have the Aqara flood sensor already, I hope you know you can attach wires to the probes so the sensor itself doesn’t need to get wet
You know, I feel like the ideal answer here is something powered by the drain water flow. Tap into the drain pipe, take a T off it and put that into a micro hydro generator (like this one), then use the output voltage to power an ESP and have it send an MQTT message.
The Hook Up made a really clever window sensor a few years ago that powers an ESP01-S using a coin cell but only when the magnet is not engaged. This would operate similarly, and could register a last-will-and-testament message to be sent when it disconnects so that you get an accurate notification of both the start and end of the shower.
But tbh if I can get a flood sensor to work that’s by far the easiest solution and I’d rather just do that. I’ve ordered a bunch of alternatives, to see if any others work better than the Aqara. Also wondering if I could improve it by coating the bottom of the sensor, between the probes, with something hydrophobic.
In my case, I have the central heating working as a hotwater boiler, and is only used for heating or shower.
And this boiler happens to be interfaced to HA, which allowed me to use the position of the 3-way water as source
(idle / heating / warmwater)
Long story short, aqara humidity installed in smart position detects when we start showering, i installed it for automate the exhausting fan. works reliable, the peak is the morning shower. with the correct position and trigger value, it starts the fan in less than one minute
The sensible answer is the humidity sensor, works well enough. Certainly if you take an adjacent room as the baseline humitity to compare with.
The completely over the top but way cool was mentioned above, I have it too. A hand shower with water powered sensors inside for water flow, temperature, time. A bluetooth proxy nearby for integration. Works like a charm, you can see the water temp in the shower and have an indicator for time to stimulate saving water:
There are several working integrations for it, both on the esp or in HA itself. This is one for HA, Amphiro is a sub brand of Hansa:
OK, I gave up on flood sensors, and I’m using humidity as many sensible people have suggested. But… too slow.
My bathroom is open plan with the bedroom so when the shower is on I want the blinds to come down to provide privacy, but the reaction time on the humidity sensor is too slow.
One approach I just thought of is vibration sensor stuck to the top of the rainfall shower head. I’ve ordered one and gonna see if that might work.
What is too slow? Response time of sensor is typically around 5s. Maybe trigger threshold is set too high?
Wouldn’t motion sensor work better for your privacy blinds?
