Notify or do something when an appliance like a dishwasher or washing machine finishes

[grischard (Guillaume Rischard)]

Carlton, you write, if I understand correctly, that you left the starting and finishing thresholds to the defaults, and that’s why they’re not showing up in the generated yaml. If you’d changed them, they would show up as starting_hysteresis, starting_threshold, finishing_hysteresis, finishing_threshold, a bit like this:

- id: '1651783438816'
  alias: Appliance has finished
  description: ''
  use_blueprint:
    path: sbyx/notify-or-do-something-when-an-appliance-like-a-dishwasher-or-washing-machine-finishes.yaml
    input:
      starting_hysteresis: 1
      finishing_hysteresis: 1
      starting_threshold: 6
      finishing_threshold: 6
      power_sensor: sensor.dishwasher_watts
      actions:
      - service: notify.brooks5123
        data:
          message: dw done
          title: dw done
      pre_actions:
      - delay: '0'

The rest of the fun happens in code that is in the blueprint - you can click on the gist to read it and see how it works.

[carltonb (Carlton Brooks)]

Thank you for the information.
I thought that I would try it with the defaults listed but now I know they need to be changed.
Will try it and see what happens.
Thanks

[e-raser]

@Sbyx: I was wondering if you would add those triggers:

- platform: event
  event_type: automation_reloaded
- platform: homeassistant
  event: start

I think that would easily and finally make automations based on this blueprint work if
a) automations have been reloaded
b) HA has been restarted

Both cases/events rendered my automations based on this blueprint useless during the last years, cause they “forgot” their starting_threshold and starting_hysterisis have been crossed already (the automation has been triggered already and is/was running). In short: currently this blueprint is not able to survive reloading automations. Possibly those additional triggers will fix this (and make my additional “failsafe automation” useless).

I primarily use this blueprint to make my working desk power plug been switched off automatically after system has been shutdown/hibernated/removed.

(see my report from March and April 2021… Notify or do something when an appliance like a dishwasher or washing machine finishes - #54 by e-raser + Notify or do something when an appliance like a dishwasher or washing machine finishes - #55 by e-raser)

---

UPDATE after 7 days of testing:
3 minor modifications and this blueprint finally works perfectly. See Notify or do something when an appliance like a dishwasher or washing machine finishes - #133 by e-raser for details.

[leofabri]

@e-raser I think I might have the solution! You could give my blueprint a try!

Detect and monitor the state of an appliance based on its power consumption - V2.1.1 - Updated!

Big news! Version 2.0.0 is now public There are a ton of changes! As always, feel free to share your impressions! @siklosi it should fix your issue

[e-raser]

Thank you. While I basically don’t like the approach of “outsourced configuration data” (by using helper entities as config parameters instead of handling all inside the blueprint/automation which is much more tidy and centralized) I will have a look at your blueprint. It looks like a very very VERY powerful one. Interesting is the external “only Italian” HA Power Control part I don’t even get what it does, will probably head over to Google Translate to do the IT/EN or IT/DE job

I’m really quite happy with @Sbyx ones blueprint here, actually it works perfect… as soon as the bug/optimization noted here has been fixed/implemented

[leofabri]

@e-raser Well, I am working on a translation myself
I’d then ask HA Power Control’s author to approve that. I’m like 90% done, but that’s still unfinished.

I answered a question about that specifically, it should explain what it does:

Detect and monitor the state of an appliance based on its power consumption - V2.1.1 - Updated!

Hey! I appreciate that you like it! Yeah, I put so much effort into the overload situation because appliances tend to be the main cause of blackouts in my house. My circuit breaker is so dumb and it doesn’t detach things until it’s too late Here instead, I’m using HA_PowerControl and the smart sockets to decide when to do that, prior to a total blackout. This is just perfect when, for example, you have your dishwasher and washing machine are running concurrently (that’d be a 4KW …

[leofabri]

@e-raser

Honestly, even if I do like this blueprint, the problem that you mention, that “currently this blueprint is not able to survive reloading automations” is a big deal to me.

I actually doubt that adding the automation_reloaded and the start triggers would make a big difference. What they’d do instead is execute the pre_actions (Actions when starting threshold is crossed) and nothing more. Therefore, unless the appliance is still running and the power consumption is not steady (exactly 0.0W, indefinitely) the waiting for the trigger finishing_threshold would never end/happen.

The problem with state triggers that wait for some time to be valid is that they are completely nullified after home assistant reboots, and there’s no way of getting around this, if not using some ‘helper’ variables and possibly a state machine that can ‘remember’ what was happening before the blueprint was reloaded.

---

To me, it seems like this blueprint is conceptually made to work this way. Maybe it’s just because it’s very ‘unlikely’ that HA or the automations get reloaded during an appliance’s cycle, or maybe because it wasn’t as meaningful to the author as it would have overcomplicated things. However, this happened many times already and deserves attention.

---

My solution was made for at least 4 reasons:

1. I wanted it to work even after Home Assistant reboots or automations get reloaded, so I made the raw logic as stateless as possible.
2. I wanted to be able to perform custom actions not just when the appliance finishes.
3. I wanted it to be more responsive to changes in power consumption and chose not to wait for some time to pass. I thought that this would be useful to measure how long a cycle takes to complete.
4. I wanted to make the appliance ‘aware’ of being the cause of an overload.

Obviously, this solution needs 4 of those helper entities but, in my opinion, the trade-off is worth it.

[leofabri]

Please note that pt. 4 is optional! In the sense that: when you configure my blueprint, you can leave the “Appliance Suspended entity” empty, and it should still work.
The only difference is that you’ll never see the detached_overload state ever happen (you still have to put it in the state machine though).

I’ll update my documentation and mention it there as well.

[e-raser]

Well, no reply after a week (or even months regarding the initial bringing up that idea point of time), unfortunately.

Just wanted to note: my forked blueprint containing these two simple additional triggers (see Notify or do something when an appliance like a dishwasher or washing machine finishes - #127 by e-raser) and setting mode to restart work just perfectly* for all my use-cases (mainly powering off power plugs or sending notifications when dishwasher, washing machine etc. finished their work).

* meaning: restarting HA as well as reloading automations (which might happen A LOT sometimes) don’t break automations based on this blueprint anymore. Only “downside” is of cause they get triggered and are constantly (shown as) running (attribute current: 1) until the numeric_state condition is met - which is therefore just a cosmetic issue I warmly buy for the mentioned benefits.

[kolle86]

@e-raser

- platform: event
  event_type: automation_reloaded
- platform: homeassistant
  event: start

hi, where exactly did you add

- platform: event
  event_type: automation_reloaded
- platform: homeassistant
  event: start

or maybe you can share a link to your fork? ist it on github?

thanks

[csjo]

All,

I’m getting this error in my trace with this BP.

Executed: July 24, 2022 at 12:25:13 PM

Error: offset should be format 'HH:MM', 'HH:MM:SS' or 'HH:MM:SS.F'

Any thoughts?

[jes1417]

Error that popped up on the recent beta 2022.8b01

2022-07-29 23:51:30.063 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.config] Invalid config for [automation]: Invalid trigger configuration. Got OrderedDict([('default_config', {}), ('homeassistant', OrderedDict([('packages', OrderedDict([('automations', OrderedDict([('automation', [OrderedDict([('id', '1649570579323'), ('alias', 'Appliance has finished - washing machine'), ('description', ''), ('use_blueprint', OrderedDict([('path', 'sbyx/notify-or-do-something-when-an-appliance-like-a-dishwasher-or-washing-machine-finishes.yaml'), ('input', OrderedDict([('power_sensor', 'sensor.tasmota_energy_power'), ('actions', [OrderedDict([('ser.... (See ?, line ?). 

[JanLankhorst (Jan)]

Hi e-raser,

Got a link to your fork? Want to share?

greetz

[e-raser]

I didn’t publish it, just using the file locally. As noted it wasn’t a big thing, only minor changes as described.

[Cowley]

You forget to configure the startup delay time, It is at the bottom of the automation.

[metbril (Robert 🇳🇱🇪🇺)]

Thanks for this blueprint. It’s working perfectly. For my own purposes, I have improved the blueprint.

• Hysteresis presented as a duration selector. (Selectors - Home Assistant)
• Entities limited to power sensors by device class (Selectors - Home Assistant)

I have shared the blueprint back to the community:

metbril/home-assistant-blueprints/blob/92c332dd156c1d8336246ef926bb38529c223188/automation/appliance_has_finished.yaml

[Daniel_Cook (Dan Cook)]

In my case I use a Zooz Z-Wave Plus Power Switch ZEN15 to report power consumption on my washing machine. I was planning to use this automation to get notified when the spin cycle is finished, since that’s usually a few minutes from the end of the full washer load.

During the spin cycle the power consumption can get as high as 400W, but occasionally the washer takes a pause during the spin such that the wattage falls back down to very nearly the idle wattage.

Bottom line: spin cycle instantaneous power consumption is not guaranteed to remain above a reasonably high threshold for even 10 seconds, even though the moving average is definitely above 100W for 5+ minutes.

So maybe detecting onset of the spin cycle is not the point, and I should just trigger “started” by the washer being something like 2x the idle wattage for X minutes, and “stopped” at a later point when it’s back to idle wattage for Y minutes, and pray that the pauses in the spin cycle don’t approach the idle wattage.

Anybody else with a ZEN15 and a washing machine in the same camp as me?

[madbrain]

I’m not using a ZEN15 - rather, I’m using less expensive TP-Link KP125 Wifi smartplugs.

However, I have run into a similar with my Whirlpool clothes washing machine. The power usage is all over the place.

The fix for me is to using a long finishing hysteresis, of 4 minutes below 6W. I came up with it by studying the consumption curve of the washer.

I came up with the 4 minutes because the “Tumblefresh” option of the washer spins once every 5 minutes, if enabled. I hadn’t enabled it in this particular cycle, though. Making the finishing hysteresis longer than 5 minutes would cause the finish action never to be executed if I had turned on that option in the washer, which I usually do, but forgot this time.

[metbril (Robert 🇳🇱🇪🇺)]

Have you considered a sensor that flattens the jumps?

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[ankushg (Ankush Gupta)]

Is there a way to use this blueprint automation to manage a sensor that contains the state of my dishwasher/laundry/dryer?

I’d love to have a simple entity that shows “running” or “finished X hours ago” or something