Garden fountain pump monitor - simple!

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1

I have a fountain in the garden that has a small pump in it to circulate the water. I’ve long had it on a power switch that turns it on at sunrise and off at dusk. I replaced the smart plug with a cheap SwitchBot Mini from Amazon (reflashed with Tasmota) a while back, and it occurred to me that the plug reports power. So I monitored the power for a few days, and discovered that it draws 36-37 watts. Today I pulled the pump from the water so it ran dry, and then checked the power draw. It was down to 30-31 watts. I put it back in the water and it’s up to 36 watts again.

So I quick created a very simple automation that turns off the pump and notifies us if the fountain runs dry:

alias: Fountain failure
description: >-
  If the fountain is drawing less power than normal (36W-37W) turn it off and
  notify us
trigger:
  - platform: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.fountain_energy_power
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 1
      seconds: 0
    above: 10
    below: 33
condition: []
action:
  - type: turn_off
    device_id: 86d10ac589cd11429f03147bc28b2bff
    entity_id: 5b9b9042bdd51bac3ec3b5f60d96f548
    domain: switch
  - service: notify.both_of_us
    data:
      title: Fountain
      message: The fountain is out of water.
mode: single

I like this so much I’m going to monitor our sump pump next.

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2

Creative think. Thanks for sharing, mate.

3

I took the concept one step further. When the fountain is empty it opens a sprinkler valve for a minute (or whatever) and refills it.

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