I know the first thing I’m going to hear is “WebCore” and I’m not opposed to using it I just want to see if there is already a SmartApp out there that will already do what I’m looking for before I spend/waste time trying reinventing the wheel so to speak
Anyway, My HVAC air handler is in the basement, there’s a small pump on the floor that pumps out the water/humidity from the coil. Occasionally the line that’s connected to the pump will clog, whether it be from schmutz or a bug making a nest, and the pump will run and run but no water leaves, eventually leading to it over flowing and if I don’t catch it early enough, water all over the place. Not enough to cause major damage but enough to tick me off.
What I’m looking to do is plug the pump into a power monitoring plug, increasing my zigbee mesh along the way, and have it alert me if the pump is running for more that X amount of minutes continuously. This will let me know its time to break out the air compressor and blow out the lines.
Energy Alerts (Automation > Add a SmartApp > Energy Management > Energy Alerts) is what you might be looking for. I don’t know of any SmartApp (or even webCoRe formula) that will tell you if something is “running” as the plug on/off is really just a binary and whatever is plugged into it is also either on or off.
However, webCoRe would probably be a better solution as you can set a timer to monitor and alert if a power reading is x for y minutes.
I agree that the energy monitoring is the cleanest/simplest but just as an alternative IF it’s a sump pump with a float arm like I have for my condensation you could put a contact sensor that opens when the arm is up (pumping). Then you can use the app that alerts if a contact is open for x minutes.
I’m interesting in doing the exact same thing: adding a simple sensor to my HVAC’s condensate pump to alert me when it’s been running for too long. This thread appears to be quite useful: Internal contacts on ecolink door sensor (DWZWAVE2.5-ECO)
I got as far as buying the Schlage sensor (it has an Ecolink label on the back, model # DW-ZWAVE2), but too many other projects got in the way. I’ll update here if I ever get the thing installed and working. Anyway, hopefully the thread above is helpful.
