Nope, not ideal. But probably a fact of life for a bit since I think the company is still pretty new and working out the API anyway.
With luck, there will be an eventual option like the Eagle power meters to stream data towards a local device. But I wouldn’t count on it soon.
How does the flume sensor read the flow rate by being in close proximity to your utility ready? It looks like it just gets strapped around your meter from one side.
I got one of these meters a few months ago, and so far it’s twice detected when one of my kids left a tap slightly on. I believe that it works by detecting changes in the magnetic field created by part of the utility meter rotating.
They just announced the API, and I’ve started working on a component to integrate it. I’ll keep this thread updated on my progress.
There’s also a good thread over at the Sense forum about the various smart water monitor options.
@poldim, I don’t exactly know how it works, but I’d guess it’s hall effect.
The battery in the remote unit is just to radio in what it detects. I think this is pretty common (the spinning magnets) in physical sensors.
I just got the Flume device and considering it’s the only device with these capabilities, it’s great. Now just to figure out how to use oauth with homeassistant. Hopefully someone builds a generic oauth authentication system within HA so we can easily build sensors on top of that.
It is not the only device with these capabilities, see eg Using ESPhome to build a water flow rate meter
There are a surprising number of devices in this space, if you check out the Sense thread I linked to above there’s a good discussion.
The interaction with the API should be in an external library, and I’ve started sketching one out. So far it’s returning the total usage for the current day and month. Let me know what you think.
Well, the only device that’s solely battery powered and can just strap onto a water meter. 
Glad to see someone developing an add-on for it. How does one manually install an add-on?
What are the details on setting this up as a custom component? I just got flume last week and would love to integrate it in home assistant.
Great, give mine a try and see what you think. Here’s what you need to do:
custom_components/flume
example_config.yaml file to your configuration.yaml fileIf there are other things you’d like this component to do, please let me know and I’ll try to add them in.
Let me know if you have any trouble.
Thanks for the update and documentation.
I’ve followed the instructions, but I’m not getting the sensors.
This is all the log file shows with debug level enabled:
> 2019-07-16 10:34:51 INFO (SyncWorker_17) [homeassistant.loader] Loaded flume from custom_components.flume
> 2019-07-16 10:34:52 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.loader] You are using a custom integration for flume which has not been tested by Home Assistant. This component might cause stability problems, be sure to disable it if you do experience issues with Home Assistant.
> 2019-07-16 10:34:52 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.sensor] Setting up sensor.flume
Just installed it and its working great! No issues.
What is the lowest reporting time? Does the API limit to day / month?
Thanks Michael for creating this!
@j0dan If there aren’t any errors it should have worked. Did you check the States and Entity Registry?
@DrcashMan The API’s rate limit is “120 requests per hour”, though I’m not sure how multiple queries sent in a single POST request are counted. The smallest period of time you can request is 1 minute.
After testing this out for the past few hours the daily use sensor works great to use the values in Node Red for automation’s. No need for smaller request periods.
Looks like they are there. I was searching for the text “flume”.
Cheers!
Great! If you think of any other queries that would be useful as sensors, just let me know.
Any way to have it show hourly usage instead of an always increasing counter?
Sure, how about the total for the last 60 minutes? That will gradually go up and down over time, but won’t steadily increase and then reset to zero.
I think that would do the trick.