I have a well pump and want to understand what my water usage looks like. I tried to find water meters with wireless transmitters (zigbee, wifi, z-wave, etc) but could not find anything which is reliable, fairly accurate and costs less than $50.
So I decided to monitor the usage of the well pump instead - by knowing how many gallons it pumps per minute, I can get approximate consumption of pumped water.
The thing is - well is 240V/60Hz and I could not find any fairly cheap zigbee/wifi monitor.
Then I found this - WiFi Smart Energy Monitor Switch Meter - while it is double the price I was willing to pay for it, I don’t see any alternatives for 240V.
Anyone has used the above meter and integrated it with HA?
I have a 6,500 litre rainwater harvesting tank. I need to monitor when pump is working (it is triggered by falling pipe pressure), water flow, tank depth and general pipe pressure. Therefore I have:
Shelly EM + clamp + contactor (so I can remotely program when pump is off = low tank level etc etc)
0-5v depth sensor = this allows me to calculate litres in the cylinder (and next job is to calculate rate at which water is used)
0- 5v pressure sensor to indicate bar pressure of the charged irrigation pressure vessel
At all times I know exactly the state of my system. Water flow is my last luxury to calculate from depth of tank change!
You need to choose depth and voltage, so that you are never over 3.3v ESP pin limit or what ever ADC you are using. I used ADS1115 for accuracy and could go a bit higher on voltage. You also need to use twisted pairs shielded if long distance and used a buck converter to have 24v, 5v and 3.3v with a common ground. That means all sensors have the same base
ESPHome is great and I can share settings if needed
Current detection
Shelly EM is well documented and my electrician was great in ensuring that the rated contactor met UK regulations. The pump,is rated 4 or 5 amps but the start up induction surge current is close to 14amps. So a contactor is a must.
Well the most important question now (that we know the voltage andfrequency) is what current your pump is drawing.
Depending on that the solution can be vary from devices like a sonoff pow r2 (16A rated), sonoff pow r3 (25A rated) up to a pzem004t (100A rated) combined with esp(home). The later might be the most accurate and at the same time maybe even the cheapest but involves a little DIY.
If you take control over the *ware and not only buy hardware you can also implement things like a dry run protection or automatic shut-off after time or when a sensor is triggered. This can all work locally (without wifi/ha) if implemented directly on the esp
This tells me that SONOFF POWR3 should be more than enough for this job.
Now one question - do I have to use esp with it? Have no experience with esp.
If the sonoff switch comes with wifi, can’t I import metrics directly to HA?
P.S. Found SONOFF POW Elite at Aliexpress - ordered two - USD $35 with shipping and taxes.
If I’m not mistaken AC Motors/Pumps should be oversized in terms of the relay by the factor of 2 because it’s a inductive load and (very simplified spoken) draws 0A one moment and the double of the rated current the other moment (that would be 23A in your case) - the average results on the datasheet (11.5A for you).
By the looks of it as the one linked in my post is rated for max 25A.
Well, afaik (don’t own a powr3) most of the sonoff devices are build around esp’s (for example sonoff basic, sonoff pow r2, …) and often even have a so called “DIY mode” to change the stock firmware for some self-brew (like esphome). How the stock firmware integrates with home assistant I can’t tell because the first thing I do is to own the devices I buy
By the looks of it this (sonoff pow elite) is only rated for a maximum of 20A (the smaller version only for max 16A).