Rule Machine: Charging area in garage

This is a sharing post, not an asking for help post. Just thought this was a cool rule. Even though I’m sure one has been posted similar to this before.

Created a rule in Rule Machine for my garage. I have a work bench in my garage that has all of my tool battery chargers for flash lights, drills, dremels, etc, etc.

One thing that really annoyed me was that when some of the chargers were on and were done charging and were just trickle charging, they would make a high pitch noise. One has a cooling fan even.

I hooked up a SmartThings outlet to the power strip that the chargers are on and looked at what wattage it was using when idle (all chargers had batteries, and all were done / trickle charging). And it used about 3.2w on average, and 1.1w when none of them had batteries in them.

So I set up a SmartThings rule that says, when the wattage is below 10 watts and the switch is on, then turn off the switch with a 5 minute delay pending cancellation on truth change. AKA, if it’s using less than 10 watts for more than 5 minutes, then turn off the switch.

All of the batteries are lithium ion so I’ve found trickle charging really isn’t needed as they hold their charge for months. One co-worker recommended adding another rule that just turns the switch on every so often, almost like a check to see if charging is needed.

Here’s the Rule if anyone is interested :slight_smile:

I know it’s not complex by any means. But many times, I get most of my SmartHome automations by scrolling through the forums reading about other peoples ideas.

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