Using power monitoring to track the on/off state of retro gaming consoles? Looking for suggestions

ESPHome
1

I’m currently brainstorming an automation and I would like to be able to track the power state of multiple retro game consoles and use that as triggers for automations. These consoles have no network capabilities and so I’m assuming the only way to monitor this would be to track power usage of the consoles.

Was wondering what the best way to do with would be? I have at least 7 consoles I want to track and would like to avoid off-the-shelf smart plugs because I prefer DIY solutions when possible and I’m really not interested in any kind of remote on/off functionality here. I just want to track the power state of the consoles and I have about a dozen unused ESP8266s laying around that I would like to use here if possible.

I was thinking, if possible, I’d like to wire something in line with the PSU. I use aftermarket PSUs from Triad Magnetics on all my older consoles, so I wouldn’t be chopping up any legacy OEM hardware here. I was thinking I could cut the cord, solder in the sensor, and then close that up in a little project enclosure.

I’ve seen ESPhome supports several sensors for current and power and have looked at a few of those, but I don’t have any experience using these and would like to defer to the community’s experience here. What’s best solution here?

Thanks in advance for any help offered.

2

Do you even need to monitor power consumption?
Retro console sounds like there might be a power source or signal when the device is turned on that could be connected directly to the esp.

3

You’re not wrong, my PS1 and Dreamcast both have HDMI out mods that use ESP modules to install firmware updates and so I’m tracking the power state of those based on a ping sensor that pings the IP of the HDMI mod. All these old console use hard on/off switches, so when the console is powered off, the ESP module is powered off too.

I’m not sure how I would wire something like that up for each console though, I assume wiring something up internally to the console would be required, but I’m not totally comfortable going in and figuring it out how to do it safely on my own, an aftermarket PSU gets trashed and I’m out maybe $10 at most, a Neo Geo AES gets trashed and I’m out $500.