🔌 Can anyone recommend a smart plug (US) with rapid energy/wattage reporting?

[handcoding (Ashley Bischoff)]

I’m based in the US, and I’m looking for recommendations for a smart plug with rapid energy/wattage reporting, if anyone might have any leads?

Here’s my use case: I have a non-smart Panasonic projector in my home theater, and I’d like to be able to have the lights automatically dim when the projector turns on. (Basically, my plan is to set up an automation that triggers whenever the projector draws more than XX watts for YY seconds, at which point it would dim the house lights.)

• I’m equally open to smart plugs that might use ZigBee (whether ZHA or ZigBee2MQTT), Z-Wave, or Wi-Fi. (I have a ZHA coordinator installed and a ZigBee2MQTT coordinator installed, and I have a Z-Wave stick too.)

• The power grid in my area isn’t always the most reliable, and I occasionally get mini power that outages might last a few seconds. So I’m also looking for a smart plug that either defaults to on after a power outage or one that can restore its last state after a power outage.

• Lastly—and I’m not sure if this part might be a lot to ask—I’m looking for a smart plug that reports any changes in energy usage (wattage) to Home Assistant within 5 seconds (or less). (And if you might know of one that reports changes in energy usage within a second, that’d be even better.) I need rapid energy/wattage reporting like this is because I’d like to have the house lights start dimming as soon as possible after I turn the projector on.

• I’m comfortable around tech things, but I don’t have the patience to deal with flashing devices or the like—so I’d really prefer a smart plug that pretty much works out of the box.

• While I’m not going to say that “cost is no object,” I can safely say that cost isn’t a large concern for me here.

In case it might help to narrow things down, here are the smart plugs that I’ve tried so far (unsuccessfully):

• I tried Aqara’s ZigBee-based smart plug (ZNCZ12LM). This smart plug supposedly works with ZigBee2MQTT, but in reality, the toggle within the UI to enable the “power_outage_memory” flag doesn’t work; so each time there were to be a power outage and then the power were to come back on, this smart plug would remain off. 🫤

• I’ve also tried the Thirdreality ZigBee smart plug (3RSP02028BZ). This smart plug works with ZHA, and the UI switch to have it restore its state after a power outage works too—but for some reason, this smart plug only seems to report its energy usage (wattage) to Home Assistant every 5 minutes, which makes this smart plug pretty useless for triggering automations in a timely manner.

Anyhow, does anyone have any recommendations for this sort of thing?

[Kimotu (Kimotu Bates)]

Maybe this one:

Shelly Plug US

I personally use Shelly Plug S (EU version) and you can define which state to start after power outage and the powermeter updates each second.

[MaxK (Mark)]

+1 Shelly Plug US.

[handcoding (Ashley Bischoff)]

@MaxK @Kimotu Thank you both for your recommendations—I’ll give the Shelly Plug US a try!

[vingerha]

Innr is good too, note that I bought cheap Tuya-zigbee plugs with Ali but they are slow to respond, good for measuring longer stuff but quite poor if you want to steer automations using the power reading

[1technophile]

Hello,

We have released the Theengs Plug, I think it could be a good fit for your use case following your requirements.

Theengs Plug - ESP32 Bluetooth BLE MQTT gateway, smart plug, energy co

@handcoding

I’m equally open to smart plugs that might use ZigBee (whether ZHA or ZigBee2MQTT), Z-Wave, or Wi-Fi. (I have a ZHA coordinator installed and a ZigBee2MQTT coordinator installed, and I have a Z-Wave stick too.)

It uses WiFi and can act as a Bluetooth gateway, also supporting more than 70 sensors

@handcoding

The power grid in my area isn’t always the most reliable, and I occasionally get mini power that outages might last a few seconds. So I’m also looking for a smart plug that either defaults to on after a power outage or one that can restore its last state after a power outage.

The plugs recover its last state after a power outage.

@handcoding

Lastly—and I’m not sure if this part might be a lot to ask—I’m looking for a smart plug that reports any changes in energy usage (wattage) to Home Assistant within 5 seconds (or less). (And if you might know of one that reports changes in energy usage within a second, that’d be even better.) I need rapid energy/wattage reporting like this is because I’d like to have the house lights start dimming as soon as possible after I turn the projector on.

It currently reports every 10s the power consumption, voltage and current, but we can add a parameter to reports more often if you would like.

@handcoding

I’m comfortable around tech things, but I don’t have the patience to deal with flashing devices or the like—so I’d really prefer a smart plug that pretty much works out of the box.

It comes already flashed. You must have HA and the embedded MQTT Broker (no YAML). The plug is auto-discovered by HA once connected to the broker.

Let me know if you have any question

[handcoding (Ashley Bischoff)]

@1technophile

It currently reports every 10s the power consumption, voltage and current, but we can add a parameter to reports more often if you would like.

@1technophile That would be quite helpful!

As mentioned in the post, a smart plug that reports power consumption only every ten seconds is of no use to me. (If my house lights were to dim only once I’m already ten seconds into the movie, I would look foolish.)

[k8gg]

I use sonoff S31. And there is this integration that can specify frequencies of data reporting.

so for example, I have this configuration:

  devices:
    10000000fe:
      name: Plug w/ power meter
      reporting: 
        power: [30, 3600, 1]     # min seconds, max seconds, min delta value
        current: [5, 3600, 0.1]  # min seconds, max seconds, min delta value
        voltage: [60, 3600, 1]   # min seconds, max seconds, min delta value

So quite flexible - you can limit the rate with upper and lower bar, and most of all, if the value changes beyond specified value, it would report also.

That said, in my use case I do not need super short reporting intervals, so don’t know whether the hardware would behave the same way I set it up to be.

[1technophile]

@handcoding

@1technophile That would be quite helpful!

As mentioned in the post, a smart plug that reports power consumption only every ten seconds is of no use to me. (If my house lights were to dim only once I’m already ten seconds into the movie, I would look foolish.)

Got it, we will add a feature to have reporting of the power consumption configurable below 10s

[handcoding (Ashley Bischoff)]

@Kimotu @MaxK By the way, just to follow-up on this for others who might come across this thread later: I picked up a Shelly Plus Plug (US), and it’s been working fantastically. A++.

Thank you again for the recommendation!

And as a tip for anyone else who might try out the Shelly Plus Plug: You can configure the plug without having to use Shelly’s (terrible) app if you connect to the Shelly Plug’s Wi-Fi hotspot and then open 192.168.33.1 in your browser.

[MaxK (Mark)]

@handcoding

And as a tip for anyone else who might try out the Shelly Plus Plug: You can configure the plug without having to use Shelly’s (terrible) app if you connect to the Shelly Plug’s Wi-Fi hotspot and then open 192.168.33.1 in your browser.

100% agree!

[1technophile]

The rapid detection of current change has been implemented in firmware version 1.6.0 of the Theengs Plug

Every 0.5s, the current is checked, and if there is a value change of more than 0.1A, the energy consumption values are reported.
This will enable triggering automation based on the connected device state.

[orange-assistant (the real one)]

Just for the record: All the suggested (and used) wifi plugs seem to be powered by espressif esp socs.

The only limit therefor existing regarding sensor readings are the in software (and obviously the hardware specification).

By installing a open *ware like esphome on the device virtually everything becomes possible.

ESPHome — ESPHome

My mains power is monitored with a cheap (<$10) pzem004t v3 with an update_interval of 100ms

sensor:
  - platform: pzemac
    energy:
      name: "${upper_devicename} Total Energy"
    frequency:
      name: "${upper_devicename} Frequency"
    voltage:
      name: "${upper_devicename} Voltage"
    current:
      name: "${upper_devicename} Current"
    power_factor:
      name: "${upper_devicename} Powerfactor"
    power:
      name: "${upper_devicename} Power"
    update_interval: 0.1s

[HVR88]

@handcoding

I picked up a Shelly Plus Plug (US), and it’s been working fantastically

Still working? I had 4 of these and they’ve all died. Shelly support made me shoot videos of them in order to get replacements. I replaced 2 when they first failed and the replacements have since also failed.

The very first one died within the first week. The others after some months. One lasted maybe a year.

I have a lot of other Shelly gear, but I’d never try their smart plugs again.

The Z-Wave high-power model I’m using from Zooz with my espresso machine has been going strong for about 5 years, along with another lower-capacity model from Zwaveproducts I used with under-cabinet lighting. Both are switched on/off daily.