I’d like to use a smart outlet or energy monitor to make sure power is not lost to our sump pump and send a notification when/if it is. Also it would be nice to monitor energy usage to know how often the pump is running at various time during the year. Here are my questions:
Will the samsung smart outlet provide this type of functionality
If power is lost will the outlet revert back to it’s previous (on) state
If the samsung outlet won’t do this is there another device that will.
I can’t be 100% sure, but the last power outage I had at home I did not have to turn them back on. I’m confident in saying yes.
I think using the SmartThings outlet would be just fine, as well as the Iris version of it. They are zigbee devices. I use both without any issues. I also use Aeon’s smart energy switch on my washer, dryer, refrigerators, and a few other places.
There are several smartapps that can be used to monitor power usage and send you a notification. I personally like the Aeon’s because I’ve tweaked the device handler to show watts in more detail (more decimal places instead of just a whole number). The other outlets will show 0 watts when nothing is running, even though there’s a small power draw for the LED and internal circuitry.
When a smartapp is monitoring for 0 (assuming power loss), you could get a false notification when in actuality what ever you have plugged in to it is just not turned on.
The other devices can also have a custom device handler easily written to do the same btw.
I’m using the Aeon Smart Energy Switch that @johnconstantelo mentioned. I was going to use one of the other Smart Outlets I have, but it didn’t have a high enough wattage rating to handle the sump pump motor.
My situation is a little bit different because I’m using mine to limit the frequency that the pump runs so I’m frequently turning on and off the device, but I have it setup so that it notifies me if it hasn’t used any power for a specified amount of time.
Mine doesn’t automatically turn on when the power is restored, but it does revert back to the state it was in before it lost power. so you should be fine if you plan on keeping the switch on all the time.
Since ST is so unstable and occasionally turns things off and on all by itself, I highly recommend getting a cheap dumb water sensor so if all else fails you’ll hear an alarm if the water gets too high.
Hello! I am looking for a similar setup for two chest freezers. One is in the basement and the other in the garage so I can’t always see if they are running.
It was stated that the Samsung outlet can notify during a power loss, but from my limited understanding doesn’t a power loss prohibit any reporting from it? As far as I can tell there is no battery power.
I also tried using the mentioned Aeon switch but was having the false signals of 0w during idle running.
I was able to convince my wife that we needed this whole hub setup to monitor the product kept in the freezers and now I have yet to find a way to do so.
Thanks!
[quote=“Waldo68, post:4, topic:43253”]
I also tried using the mentioned Aeon switch but was having the false signals of 0w during idle running.
[/quote]When using the Aeon Switch, if it never goes more than a specific amount of time without displaying something, you could use an application like the one below to monitor it.
Example: If the device usually reports something at least every 5 minutes, you could set a threshold of 6 minutes for those switches and if they haven’t had any activity within 6 minutes, it will send you a Push and/or SMS message. (It checks the last even times every 5 minutes so it might take an additional 4 minutes to receive the notification)
SmartApps run in the cloud so if you lose power or internet you can still receive messages.
Thank You! I was hoping there was some way to use the time since last reported in. Another thread on this site gave the impression that due to the nature of a mesh network, a device that did not report in would simply be ignored until it was back within ‘range’.
I’ve repurposed these Aeon switches to be laundry monitors, but if I can pick up a few more I will try this out. Thanks again.
So interesting turn of events, I added a surge protector rated for 1045 Joules before the Aeon switch. I was doing this in order to protect my investment of the washer as well as the switch. As a result I was no longer receiving power usage data. Any idea why this would happen? Also, is there a way to protect from power surges without interfering with the energy readings?
Kevin, I’m using your Aeon Doorbell handler, thanks, but per this thread:
I want my sump pump plugged in to power all of the time, but was hoping to use some type of plug-in module to monitor motor energy usage to determine if pump has failed. I already have multiple leak sensors to detect water depth, but I wanted an extra measure of security.
I really don’t want to put anything in line with my sump pump that is likely to fail itself creating a problem. It doesn’t have to have the ability to turn off at all.
Any suggestions ?
Some users comment out the contents of the off() command so that even if it gets executed the device won’t turn off.
I personally use this device for my sump pump and use CoRE to tell me if it has gone too long without using power. I use Smart Lighting to turn the switch on anytime it shuts off, but that hasn’t happened.
Once the device is configured with this DTH you might be able to get local execution by switching it to one of the built-in DTHs.
I also use CoRE to monitor a vibration sensor on the pipe and have water sensors connected to SmartThings and Hubitat.
Which device are you dying that you use for your sump pump, the Aeon-Labs-DSC06106-ZWUS-Z-Wave-Energy Switch ?
And which device do you use for your vibration sensor ?
I’m using a Smartthings outlet to monitor my dehumidifier and and sump pump in my not easily accessed crawl space. The dehumidifier monitoring works perfectly when the dehumidifier turns on and off.
My question or concern is about the sump pump. We’ve had decent amount of rainfall in the last 10n days and I expected the sump pump to be coming on to drain. It hasn’t come on in 8 days. So I went down and unplugged everything and plugged it back in to confirm whether or not the sump pump was working. The sump pump did come on briefly, draining as it did, so the sump pump is working. It registered power usage in the app.
The question is, why did I seemingly have to physically unplug the outlet and plug it back in to work? This pattern happened some time ago as well,. Is the sump pump using 800+ watts too powerful for the outlet? Do I need to turn off the device via the app and turn it back on to get it to work?
You need an outlet rated for motor loads. I know in theory the wattage and amperage is compatible but motor loads can spike, you need an appliance-rated outlet. I’m using few Zooz Zen15 heavy duty plugs around the house and I have no problems.
Yes i have the ST hub v3 and have had no problems. If you want more functionality, search in the forums somebody put out an excellent device handler for the ZEN15 that gives you watts, kWh, voltage, amps, high/low wattage, energy cost, etc.
I should’ve mentioned that I’m using the ST ADT Security Alarm Panel not ST hub 3. It appears that while it works for the ST hub 3 that it won’t work for ST ADT Alarm Panel, at least that’s the way I’m reading it.
I think it still should, even with the custom DTH, but you can always still use it with the stock dth provided by ST. I was doing that for a long time so the device would run local on the hub.
If you do decide to use these, I’ve got 5 of them on eBay that I don’t use anymore. They work great, but I just decided to go with GE’s Zigbee wall outlet instead (I want zigbee devices, and it’s got the same specs as the Zooz, just not all the bells and whistles)
Now the novice question(s). What’s the difference between a custom DTH and the stock DTH? I think I use one custom DTH for my IRIS camera but I’m guessing everything else is stock, is that correct? What does the stock DHT look like (do?) compared to the custom one for this device?
Without getting too long on ya’, custom DTH’s are sometimes needed for devices that ST doesn’t have stock handlers for. Custom handlers are also used to extend the functionality provided by ST’s handler. For the most part, ST’s device handlers do just the basic capabilities for a device, even though manufacturers have given their devices a lot more, especially device parameters that you can adjust (can’t do that with ST’s DTH’s). Great examples would be this zen15 device, the Zooz/Dome siren, and many many others.
I don’t have an Iris camera to confirm, but if you have this working in ST and created your own DTH, then it is custom for sure. If everything else you have joined to the hub without any problems, or showing up as a “Thing”, then more than likely everything else you have is stock. Without being able to see your device list and device handlers list in the IDE, I can’t be 100% sure of that.
Check out this discussion on what the custom DTH will do and look like:
The stock DTH only has on/off capabilities, Watts, and kWh tiles, as well as a reset tile for kWh. It’s very basic. I’d include a screenshot, but I don’t have the device anymore to capture one for you.
Thanks for the clarification. I can see various techniques to create DTH’s in the IDE including from scratch, from various templates, and from examples.
As an update to my sump pump smartplug outlet, I can’t say for certain whether or not it has actually failed or not since there is no actual standing water around the pump and the basin is not filled. What I can say is that one of my other smartplugs does function when my wife uses the blender, which runs at 1175 w versus 800 for the sump pump.
This leaves to question again, whether or not a sump pump can or cannot run off these ST smartplug outlets. Judging by the blender running with a higher output I would wonder why the sump pump wouldn’t run at a lower level of power requirement.
Can anyone confirm whether or not the sump pump would or would not run? It seems like it should based on my testing.
