My initial SmartThings devices were a pair of outlets (“pocket sockets,” I’ve seen them called?), one Z-Wave (SmartThings) and one Zigbee (Aeon, I think). They appear differently in the SmartThings app, but both of them have metering capabilities. I don’t want to use them so much as control points as sensors – I currently have them attached to our bedroom lamps, and would like to trigger a state change when we turn off our lamps for the night. It’s easy to look at power consumption and tell whether the lamp is on – >10W versus <1W. However, everything I see in automatically performing actions looks at whether the outlet is off, which it won’t be.
I’m guessing what I need is a virtual switch that turns “off” or “on” based on the power meter reading, and then hook the state changes to that virtual switch. If there’s a simpler way, I’d love to know. Does such a thing exist? If not, how hard would it be to write one?
Either mode changes or individual actions; not certain. Our usual evening routine is that we “close up shop” downstairs (kid in bed, doors locked, all other lights off, etc.) then read in bed for a bit. I was thinking of two stages: When we close the door to our bedroom any time after 9 PM, the rest of the house turns to overnight mode (all lights off if they weren’t already, etc.), but the thermostat doesn’t actually turn down until our lamps are off.
We have a separate alarm system at the moment, and pushing its Home button is part of closing up the house. Eventually I’d like to move the alarm functionality into SmartThings as well, but in the meantime I’m not sold on paying an extra $10/month for their plan that would let me integrate the existing system.