Ok guys, i need some tips, or possibly some advice on how to achive the following.
I notice alot of people are using Energy monitoring smart to let you know when things like dishwasher, washing machine etc have finished. Which is great, and something else i will be adding to my HA.
However, my dishwasher is abit of a dinosaur (i will be replacing it in the near future for an energy efficient one, however i cant afford to right now, as ive just moved in, and replaced the washing machine etc already)
In short, what i want to try and to is the following:
Detect if the DIshwasher has been turned on (using the energy monitoring from a plug)
If the dishwasher has been turned on in between the hours of 5:30am and 11:30pm, i want the smart plug to turn off, and turn back on at 11:40pm.
Notify once it starts and its stoped (during peak times)
Notify once it re-starts at 11:40pm
Notify once finished? (this may be the tricky one due to the stop and starts etc.
I have already turned the dishwasher on, and then turn it of the wall for 30 mins, and turned it back, and the dishwsher continues the current cycle (which is great as this means using the plug to turn it on and off will work for this purpose)
I use Home Assistant, and i also use NodeRed, im fairly confident i can do this, but im wondering if someone may have already done it that could share the automation, or flow or generally just give me some ideas!
I actually struggled to find anything on youtube if im honest, plenty of alerts to show you its finished, but nothing to stop, and restart or turn back on when the electric tarriff goes off peak
The difficult part here is to know in which moment the energy is cheaper. You can do it, but it depends on the company that you have, the country, etc… Then you need to create some sensors with the pricing list and the cheap hours and just turn the power on just in this period of time. If you can reach this, the rest is easy, and it depends on the dishwasher, if it needs to be pressed each time that you plug it in (Electronic pushbutton), then you will need to buy a remote external manual switch that can do that, if you are lucky and the dishwasher has a mechanical button that can be left pressed, and the dishwasher starts directly when you power it on, then it will work directly.
The time for me is easy to set. (Im on Octopus Intelligent) so the cheap rate is 11:30pm to 5:30am - so i was thinking of setting it to come back on at 11:40pm purely to give it 10 mins incase someone switches it on at say 11:28pm.
So we can avoid all the pricing lists etc - and hopefully just configure it to detect when its turn on between peak, if it doesn’t, switch the plug off, and then turn the plug back on at 11:40pm. This would work perfect fro what i need, its just trying to write that.
So energy price time - tick - thats easy (just needs to turn on at 11:30pm)
THe dishwasher is manual button - so tick - if i turn it off ont he wall, leave it a few hours, then turn it back, it just carried on with the cycle (its an old dishwasher lol)
So the difficult side i appear to have sorted - now its just bringing it all together. (im also based in the UK)
Here is an automation I use to monitor a dryer. A smart plug is used to detect on (>8W) and off (<4W), which then toggles a helper for visibility and also fires a voice announcement.
Does not 100% fit your use case but wanted to show you how I implemented a state machine focused approach to classifying the general state an appliance is on. Your automation can easily be build on top of that.