I’m trying to setup a way of monitoring the salt level in my water softener. I found this solution on Reddit but it doesn’t give specifics on how to set it up in HA.Any help would be appreciated. The following is the basic description:
What I’ve done in mine was plug it to a smart plug, and count the number of cycles it runs (based on the W usage). After X many cycles, it will notify me to top up the salt.
I then added a NFC sticker on the salt container lid. After I refill it, I scan the NFC sticker with my phone and this resets the counter. Otherwise it’ll notify me again after each cycle.
Counting Cycles:
Trigger: Numeric state of a smart plug’s power sensor.
Action: Increment the value of a Counter Helper.
There are a few Blueprints that you can use to achieve this like Sbyx’s Appliance blueprint
Notification Automation:
Trigger: Numeric state of the Counter Helper
Action: Notify yourself
Reset Counter Automation:
Trigger: Tag trigger*
Action: Reset the Counter Helper using the counter.reset action.
The values that you need to use for the numeric state triggers are something that you will need to figure out empirically based on your actual situation.
* If you aren’t already using NFC tags, don’t feel like you need to start just for this automation… There are plenty of other ways to trigger the reset like attaching a smart button near/on the softener or adding a door sensor to it.