@phiebs interesting. Do you see much of a delay for the cars API to detect the car is charging? I have just checked the Mazda integration and it was a delay of 5 minutes from the car actually starting to charge to the HA entity showing the car is charging. The Mazda app/API also sadly doesnt show the rate of charge, there is just a switch to say charging or not lol. I can precondition the car via Mazda API, or report usual stats (milage, battery level, tire pressure etc) but cant set charge by. If I turn the switch on for charging then technically I get the boost charge functionality.
Because of the lack of Ohme integration I ended up throwing together some automations and entities so I can set the start time, end time etc for 4 slots (I just need to copy/paste to add more slots). When I get the Ohme notification with the times of charging I update these slots accordingly. Obviously it doesnt take into account any deviation from Octopus if they change the slots dynamically. Automation then kicks the utility meter into cheap rate and back out during the appropriate times (although I guess I could automate that based on the Mazda charging status)
Hi, I use a Shelly EM with a CT clamp on the live wire for the Ohme charger, so HA can instantly see when itās charging, and at what rate.
I use this to control my home batteries, to prevent them draining into the car and to top them up when power is cheap, select tariff in utility meter etc.
Can you say a bit more about how you do this? I have a Ohme plug in charger and was thinking of doing something similar, how have you linked the CT to HA and how do you stop your batteries being used to charge the car?
Amazing - just set it up and worked first time! Now if there were some way to grab the slots given to it by Intelligent Octopus Go it would be a gamechanger! Happy to help test/debug etc but super well done for getting this far!
Iāve always found the intelligent dispatching a bit hit and miss and never seem to know when itās working properly (and at what rate Iām getting billed)ā¦
There isnāt any āintelligent slotsā API endpoint I can see but there is an array of āgraph pointsā that are used to plot the charge graph on the Ohme app Home Screen. I havenāt looked in to it enough, but it might be possible to work the slots out from that. Of course only after youāve plugged a car in.
@phiebs Iāve had some luck adding in a āNext Smart Charge Slotā sensor to this integration, would you mind testing it out? It does some rather inelegant calculations from the returned āgraph pointsā and seems to be accurate from my (very limited) testing. Its just looking for the start of a āriseā in the graph which occurs after the current time.
You may need to remove/re-add the integration after updating, its changed quite a bit recentlyā¦
I see! Have updated and can now see the āNext Smart Charge Slotā and appears to match whatās on the (terrible!) Ohme graph. Didnāt have to remove/re-add, just update it and gave it a reload for the craic.
This is seriously awesome as it allows me to add in the prediction of smart slots to the house loads (battery and other high load devices)ā¦ Not that we have many of them at the moment but want to take advantage!
I donāt suppose thereās anything on the Ohme API that allows for āUnlockā of the charger? I have mine set to ask for approval, mostly so I can see the schedules (as they are just a notification that once dismissed, is impossible to find other than the Ohme graph) however now that could be done in HA thanks to your great work.
Please let me know if thereās anything else youād like me to test out/help with!
Excellent news, might be worth keeping an eye on the slots and how they change as the charge progresses.
It looks relatively straightforward to add toggles to map to the 3 (at least on my Home Pro) ācharger settingsā - approve plug-ins, lock charger buttons, sleep when inactive. Iāll add them in for now and then investigate adding an āapproveā button.
My initial idea for āapprovingā is to essentially abstract it and display it as a paused charge to the user, so āapprovingā is just āunpausingā, but Iād appreciate your input
I will do, we only have a PHEV so small battery = small amount of charge slots, and with it being the period between xmas and NY, not much driving! I will keep an eye on it though.
Oh yes of course, those buttons would be great to have - not often that I mess with the approve/lock/sleep but nice to have it in HA.
Yes thatās a good idea on the āapprovingā, not sure how this will work with the plan Iām on (Octopus Intelligent Go) but I can certainly give it a try and report back. Figuring that an automation that triggers on connect/disconnect on the car, sets the charge to paused, and then a notification to devices with a āstart chargeā action which would then un-pause the charge. Just have to see how that plays with the IO plan Iām on and when the notification of times comes in (although I suppose that can be obtained from the schedules in your integration and somehow diplayed as slots, e.g. 12:00-12:30, 13:00-14:00 etc).
Great work with the integration. Seems to be working well.
It always pays to have āApprove each pluginā turned on in the Ohme app so that you can catch it when the charger isnāt talking to Ohme, especially when on IOG so that you can catch a charge occurring that isnāt a smart charge. This functionality should be in the API somewhere
@Townsmcp Iāve just released an update (v0.1.7) which exposes the settings from that page as switches. I didnāt realise the options differed between models but Iāve used some ācapabilitiesā returned by the API to only register the switches that are supported. Iāve also added a sensor and button for pending/approve charge.
Would you be able to test it with yours to make sure ālock buttonsā doesnāt appear as a switch, and that the approve charge button functions?
Afraid my unit (one of the earlier ones) doesnāt have any buttons nor any āLock buttonsā switch. However everything else is coming in nicely. The āSleep when inactiveā and āRequire approvalā toggles do indeed work!
It appears that when I plug the car in, the ācar connectedā switches state, then Ohme sends me the approval request on their app (would be great to get this in HA if at all possible) and only once I approve it does anything show in the āNext Smart Charge Slotā. And then only once actively charging does the āCar Chargingā/āCurrent Power Drawā activate. This is great because I know what state the charger is in, in HA. E.g. if plugged in but I forget to approve, then the āNext Smart Charge Slotā will be āUnknownā and I can trigger a reminder.
The killer part would be a button press in HA to āApproveā in Ohme, because then I could still have the benefit of knowing itās all working as expected but the additional ability to approve elsewhere (a zigbee button perhaps).
See below screenshots but it works an absolute charm! This is a real gamechanger for me (especially with the acceptance factor of my wife!)
Now I will make an automation that accepts when we are at home automatically and hopefully never have to interact with the Ohme app again!
All looks how Iād expect it to. The āLock buttonsā switch not showing is what should happen for your model, so it looks like the capability detection is working.
The āPending Approvalā sensor should activate, but as theres no way for me to get a āpushā from Ohme, it might take a minute or so to update until it polls again, but for using with an automation that shouldnāt matter too much (I did approval with the button so you can āapproveā before the state updates if you were doing it manually).
For now this does everything I need it to, but Iām open to adding new functionality if you or anyone else has any suggestions. Let me know here or open an issue on GitHub
Hi Dan, agree with all of that and understand the push/pull issue. I have another way of detecting connection (via the car) so I suppose if I wanted to make it as quick as possible I could write an automation to check if the car is at home and plugged in, and then push the approve button. But for the few minutes it may take Iām not sure itās worth doing.
Serioiusly well done on this, it provides all of the capability I need (and Iām sure many others). The only bit missing would be to have all of the charge slots listed in an array, as that should come from Octopus but doesnāt when using Ohme chargers. Not sure how worth that is doing tbh as so long as the Ohme isnāt set to a bump charge then itās quite easy to figure when the cheap rates kick in. In my case I charge a house battery, for those without one it could be useful to know if you can get through a washer/dryer cycle for example.
I donāt want to be the downer in all this but just be prepared to have Ohme getting in touch if you use this. From personal experience (TerraVolt) they are monitoring this kind of thing. All the best though if you pull it off!
