Ways to detect if a "dumb" device is on or off. (ideas needed)

Hardware
21

I ended up implementing this using Harry’s smart socket idea and it works great. Smart socket is mandatory anyway because 10W parasitic drain is unacceptable.

I implemented it by creating a media player template for my logitech speakers where ‘turn_on’ first turns on the socket, waits a second or two, then send an IR signal to turn on the speakers. ‘on/off’ state for the media player template is implemented via a template binary_sensor based on the consumption with a threshold of 20W.

To turn off I just configured the media player template’s ‘turn_off’ to send the IR signal to the speakers and created an automation to turn off the socket triggered by the media player template transitioning from on to off state. The nice thing about the automation is that I can just power off the speakers with the remote and the socket will switch off when it detects the power consumption drop.

So thanks for the idea Harry :+1:

22

Apologies for the necro, but this appears to be par for this thread. I was just wondering if you’d be willing to share your code, @rsporsche? I’d like to implement pretty much exactly the same thing.

23

I’d be happy to but unfortunately the amp in the Logitech sub blew up and I replaced it with a Sony AVR that I’m controlling via HDMI-CEC.

I’ll have a look through my files tomorrow and see if there’s any remnants of the old configuration though.

(oops, looks like I must have accidentally created a new account as I seem to have a new username :stuck_out_tongue: )

24

Don’t worry too much - I seem to have this working as desired via a smart plug and threshold binary sensor helper, plus my amp seems to pull less than 1A when in standby, so I’m not hugely worried about powering off the socket, so I don’t need that logic.