I’d like to detect when i unplug my iPhone first thing in the morning, after having plugged it up overnight, in order to trigger my house to wake up. This might work with a smart plug that has real-time power usage monitoring. But by the time it’s morning, the iPhone will be fully charged and only be drawing a small trickle-charge. So this would work only if the power draw due to trickle-charging of my iPhone (1) consistently remains above a small, minimum threshold; and (2) a smart plug can detect when the power usage drops below this small threshold (e.g., to zero).
So, my questions for those of you who have used smart plugs before:
(1) will the trickle-charge remain steadily above a threshold, or will it fluctuate even down to zero watts at times (if it fluctuates down to zero watts for any meaningful length of time, it won’t work very well since I’d have to detect zero watts for X seconds/minutes and that’d be too much delay to wake up the house in time)
(2) do you know of a good smart plug for real-time power usage monitoring that can detect a drop below a small threshold?
Thanks!
I use a similar program for Android and one of the trigger is plugged in or unplugged. You could limit it by unplugging and time of day and then send a WebCall to Webcore to trigger the routine.
Workflow has an action for “Get Battery Level” but that’s it. I don’t think there’s any app i have found that would trigger a home automation routine or send a webhook upon unplugging. Even if there was an app for that, I doubt it would be very reliable given Apple’s restriction on background tasks (they are scheduled at Apple’s discretion, so they are unreliable on triggering when you want them to). Would love to be proven wrong on that though!
Wait, plugged or unplugged. This is what we want. IFTTT AutomatIt to IFTTT SmartThings sends an event to SmartThings which is detected and causes an Automation (or WebCore) to trigger the devices to the desired state.
Even easier (and about the same cost as a smart plug) is an Amazon Echo in bedroom in conjunction with a SmartThings Routine. I have routines that set devices to desired state for Wake, Sleep, Read, Watch TV. Could have even more.
As far as an Energy Monitor SmartPlug, unless it is Z-Wave or Zigbee you may be disappointed. The typical refresh time is 5 minutes for these WiFi devices, so it will take that amount of time to update power usage. Even at one minute, there would be a delay.
I was thinking an alternative to using a smart plug. In SmartThings, you create an automation (i call mine Wake) that sets many devices (thermostat, lights, fans, plugs, etc) to a desired state when the automation is activated. You then enable Amazon integration in SmartThings and SmartThings in Alexa. The SmartThings automations are then available via a voice command to Alexa (“Alexa turn on Wake”).
One quirk, Alexa will not control automations that control security devices (alarms, sensors, locks).
I actually just use a $5 Amazon Dash button on my nightstand. If I’m in home mode, it triggers goodnight routine and if I’m in sleep mode it triggers good morning routine. $5 for the button and $5 for the Raspberry Pi Zero W that runs the program to trap the button press (for 3 button and my Google Home notifications). So, even cheaper than the Echo Dot, if you don’t need one for everything else in your bedroom. There are a bunch of articles on here on getting them up and running.
