Device to detect presence of power?

Hardware
1

I have a number of extension leads and I want something that will give me a warning if I’ve left one turned on for more than a couple of hours. Is there a device that I can plug in to one of the sockets and will just tell me if it is powered or not? I’ve been experimenting with power-monitoring sockets but not had any success trying to use ‘unavailable’ or ‘device_on’ etc.

Possibly I could use the last reported time from a power-monitoring socket but there’s no reason to believe any of the parameters will actually change, so I’m not sure it would be reliable.

Ideally this would be Zigbee as I’m having a lot of issues with Wifi.

2

Yes you can get any number of zigbee based smart plugs that suit your region needs to plug in for power monitoring and then to send your phone a notification if its been in an on state for x time via trigger.

3

Would a ZWAVE device do? The ZAC38 has a built-in battery which sole purpose is to report AC status. It is a ZWAVE extender but very useful for power status monitoring.

4

That’s kind of the problem he’s having, device reporting unavailable when the power is loss. He needs something that is battery powered and connected to the AC, so when the state changes, it can report the issue accurately instead of just being unavailable.

5

Where are you reading about power loss? they are asking about smart plug options to tell them if they have left a device on for a certain time after its been turned on so that they can either manually turn it off or automate it when needed.

They are not asking about a UPS solution.

6

Actually I would like something powered by the socket it’s plugged into. All I need is something I can ping. I would use wifi but I have too many wifi devices already.

7

Another item I use to accurately report power outages is a UPS via the NUT addon. My APC UPS reports line status, I can use it with the NUT addon to create automation based on the line status.

I know what you are going through, I needed an accurate report of power failures because device unavailable wasn’t always a power failure. I have so far only found 2 devices, both with batteries, the ZAC38 and APC UPS, or UPS in general connected via USB to NUT. Hopefully you can find a Zigbee solution.

8

Again you are failing to understand the issue of the user, they are not asking about power loss monitoring.

All they need is a zigbee smart plug that is the simplest solution to what they need.

Set the automation to monitor the voltage/current load of the device its powering to monitor as the When condition with a timer set for how long before it triggers.

After that in the Then Do send a notification to what ever devices they need it on with a confirm for manual or auto power off.

9

Understood but this statement belies a network issue and one of your steps should be to improve the network. “Too many devices” - how many are we talking about? I have about 170+ with no issues…

These are extremely reliable, show on/off state, measure power usage, even temperature of the unit, they work both by the cloud as well as local only, cloud access can be turned off as well if preferred. With Home Assistant you can do anything, such as when the power is turned on that can trigger a timer that would trigger a notification to you in 2 hours if the plug is still on, etc…

Above is WiFi, below is Zwave (I do nbot think they have a zigbee flavor):

Hope that helps

10

Lots of interference from neighbouring properties. A less-than-ideal router. Having tried wifi, zigbee, powerline and bluetooth, I’ve settled on zigbee because in my experience, it’s a good factor of 10 more reliable than anything else.

I have plenty of power monitoring devices. They don’t work for me because I need to be able to query whether they are being powered or not, and for some reason, the ‘availability’ status isn’t working.

Although not ideal, I will probably have to use a power-monitoring socket and trigger on e.g.

      {{ (now() - states.switch.p2_plug_on_extension_lead_switch.last_updated).total_seconds() > 1000 }}

and then make the assumption that if there’s been no update, the device must be powered off.

11

Sorry I should have thought of that, I do have neighbors all with WiFi but I am pretty sure they cause me no issues at all - I had some unreliable IOT devices anyway but after much frustration I did find a way to make them more reliable but you will say I am nuts!

I have all IOT devices on a dedicated VLAN on the internal network, but from the wireless part of their connection to my network, the problematic ones are each on their own SSID. (So this is crazy) but I ended up with six SSID’s (they each have tweaked settings for the related devices to work with minimal issues):

SSID’s - and vlan tag #

  • “Luds” - Separate secure VLAN (#1) with WPA2/3 802.11r, WiFi6, etc. all the bells and whistles for newest personal devices - relies upon a pool of 10 rotating VPN tunnels on the router for internet access and this VLAN cuts out ads from web browsing - for external internet access for all such wired and wireless devices

  • “Luds-Guest” - (#20) - for any quests - just wide open internet access, no VPN’s, no advertisement removal, access granted only to printer (and chromecasts through mDNS reflection), is it’s own guest VLAN

  • “IOT2.4” - (#10) - very “dummed down” SSID which does not have WPA3, 802.11r, only 2.4ghz not 5 or 6, external internet access is blocked (except for the chromecasts) until I want to do a round of firmware updates

  • “Level-Sense” - (#10) - same as IOT2.4 but only used for one device, dedicated to sump-pump monitoring system which is only now having rock solid connectvity as it is left alone on it’s own SSID network with getting dummed down even further for better reliability

  • “Nest” - (#10) - For our Nest Learning thermostat which does go offline now only once or twice a day for 10-15 minutes after endless tweaking and troubleshooting, has been replaced with a newer model which did not resolve the issues, looking for a simple replacement that I can control completeley and realiably using Home Assistant and either reliable wifi or I’ll run an ethernet cable up behind the unit - any suggestions?

  • “Flair” - (#10) - Dedicated for the Flair ‘puck’ which controls 11 heating/cooling vents in the home. Puck settings dummed down to completey manual, then I control opening closing the vents through this puck using home assistant taking into account which room is occupied, if the heat or air is blowing, the temperature in the room, and the air pressure in the vent. I have an older drafty home but this has completely resolved the problem of being uncomfortable, as you wallk from room to room the vents open or close as needed. The issue is this used to go offline often until it got it’s own SSID - but I am still looking for a better solution as it is cloud based and there is a delay of up to 45 seconds when I tell the damned vents to open or close.

ugh. There i’ve vented, thanks for putting up with the rant

12

I have this Plug, paired with a Zooz ZST10-700 ZWAVE Firmware 7.19, it becomes unavailable frequently. The recommendation is to update to firmware 7.21.4+. I’ve been unable to update via OTA or the Silicon Labs tool. Unavailable shouldn’t be a reliable source for power failure when there are many reasons a device becomes unavailable. If you want a reliable report of power failure, a device that directly reports power failure is optimum.

13

Possible solution below - at the bottom

FYI I am a huge proponent of all Shelly Devices, I mainly use their relays behinbd wall switches. I have them all connected with special settings which might not apply to the zwave or gigbee versions (but vastly improves the connectivity):

The below two examples are settings only available on the url for the device…

###.###.###.### being the IP address of your Home Assistant instance:

For GEN 1:
Under “Intrernet & Security” → “Advanced - Developer Settings” - >
Select “Enable ColoT”
and set the “CoIoT Peer:” to ###.###.###.###:5683

For GEN 2:
Under “Settings” → Outbound Websocket → enabled:
Connection type: Default TLS
Server: ws://###.###.###.###:8123/api/shelly/ws

I do not know if those would apply to you. But I do have another setting on all of these devices which may be of help -

I have them all set to ECO (power saving) mode turned on - but I have noticed only with the smart shelly walll plugs - that causes disconnection issues so I have if turned off for them. Therefore if that setting is available on your wall plugs can you be sure to change it to OFF and let me know what happens?

14

Thanks, I will try them. I stopped trying the update after the ZST10 was stuck in bootloader mode, so when I fixed that, I said that’s it, didn’t want to brick it.