Cumulative Time

Configuration
1

I have one of those scented wax heaters that I control with HA via a wemo plug. I would like to keep track of the cumulative time that the heater has been on so I can send myself a notification to change the wax (since it loses it’s smell). Is there any way to do this with a HA automation? I know, it’s just being lazy but is’;t that what HA is for?

2

@stevendom57

You might give this a try!

3

I am using the History Statistics sensor to calculate how long my Nest runs daily, weekly, and monthly. I would imagine that you could do the exact same with it.

You can find the sensor page here:

Let us know if you run into trouble getting it up and running, we should be able to help troubleshoot what you run into.

4

Thanks PtP and ammdc7. There are so many components to HA that sometimes it impossible to know which one does what, or even if it exists. You have made it easier for me.

5

You will learn where to look when a automation goal arises! If it works show @ammdc7 some love with a like or solution check. Best wishes!

1 Like
6

@PtP beat me to the punch! “Great Minds” and all that!!! :grinning:
All credit would go to the community for sure! Everyone has been awesome here and @Ptp is an example of that camaraderie.

Let us know how you get along @stevendom57, I’ll be interested in whatever solution you come up with.

7

After looking at this I am not sure that the History Statistics Sensor does what I want. It will tell me now long something has been on in a set time frame, such as how long the candle was on yesterday. What I would like is to have it accumulate the time while also reporting it but allow me to set the accumulation amount to zero at a random time. In this case, count the minutes that the candle is on until I replace the wax and have some way of resettimg the cumulative time to zero.

8

I see…

Probably have to come up with something pretty crazy. Just thinking through it, you’d have to create a few different things to accomplish this, but it should still be fairly easy to do.

1st.) Create an input_boolean that represents the candle wax.
2nd.) Create a sensor that calculates how long the candle wax input_boolean has been turned ‘on.’
3rd.) Create a history statistics sensor to show you how long the 2nd steps sensor has run.
4th.) ?
5th.) Profit

To make this work, only turn on/off the input_boolean when you change the wax.

9

How about just rebooting the wemo plug when you change the wax?