Trace and/or proper debug logging. Having the parent debug logging on and the trace logging would give me the most info.
New thing I'm seeing on my ZEN14. On the dashboard when I turn it on I get the hourglass and it never goes away. The plug does come on. If I click the hourglass again it will go off but the hourglass remains. I have the current driver installed and it didn't do this previously. Anyone else seeing the same? Maybe the plug needs a power cycle....
Do you have the parent device on the dashboard, or the child devices for each plug?
Is the on/off state updating on the device page? If it is, then this is just a dashboard issue.
I did find a possible issue with the way I am doing the lifeline association though, it impacted the ZEN52 but does not seem to effect the ZEN14 in my testing but I may have missed something. I planed on fixing it anyway, with my next update.
Also, if you want to turn on both logging options for the device, then repeat your test. Post a screenshot of the logs. I will try to reproduce and fix the driver if needed.
Child devices on the dashboard. They are updating on the devices page. I'm still on 2.3.5.105 C7.
I'm using your great ZEN15 driver. I'm using the 'accessory' setting. The setting is generating events even when the power state is not changed. The events are based on the time-based schedule for wattage reporting. Is it possible to suppress those non-state changing events? Thanks
Where are you seeing the events? Yes the driver is sending to the hub but I am not forcing it. The driver should only log it when it is a state change. The hub should be suppressing the duplicated events from the event log and I did not think it would trigger RM either in this case?
On the device events page. It's most a visual issue of filtering out the non-real events. Not sure about RM.
Its not supposed to do that, the hub should be filtering those out and not even posting them to the events. I will have to check it out, something odd is going on there.
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New to using the ZEN04 here. Have only used it thus far for voice activation of dumb devices (scented wax melter and a relay controller underneath my fireplace to turn it on). I tried to scan through this thread but in so doing I feel like I'm even dumber than I anticipated I would be. Can these ZEN04 plugs....say....tell me what the max wattage of my refrigerator over a given time period? I'm trying to figure out how many watts it burns during the compressor startup period to inform what type of battery backup/generator thing I need to get to use as a backup during power outages.
Hi. I'm not the expert, but I'll say what I think anyway. 
I think it does a fairly good job, to get an idea. Although, it probably won't do as good a job as a clamp on meter designed for this. But then, you'd have to try and induce the high load condition.
You have to enable hi/low attributes in the driver.
I just re-enabled it in my garage door opener and got fairly consistent readings. Are they correct? I don't know.
When I was fooling around with the Zen04 on the side by side refrigerator, I regularly got max readings of around 1000 watts.
Last power outage, I turned off the propane-sucking standby generator and ran the house, minus 240v appliance, like the well pump, microwave, etc, on a 2000W Honda inverter generator. When the fridge kicked into max current draw, the generator would bog down a lot and actually shut off one time. Maybe another motor load, like the oil boiler, came on at the same time, whatever, but we tried not to have much else going at the time.
The max load timing of the fridge isn't too predictable, either, as far as I could see. But, you can come to your own conclusions.
For long term, I'd go with something more robust, like the Zen15, but it sounds like you're only testing.
I currently have all my plugs on the max settings, to cut down on traffic, but the max you can set the watts on the Zen04 is 50 before it sends a reading. So, just enabling hi/low should catch it, as best it can.
Yeah I'm just testing, you're right. And the test didnt even last more than 2 hours. Lol. Pretty sure the 1000W max load is pretty legitimate. I came home from walking a couple pups and the fridge was completely off, and realized the smart plug either failed or safety shut off. I dont lnow how to set the settings in the driver pr what they mean, but I looked in the logs and it seems as though that after trying to plug in the fridge again after noticing the plug shut off and hearing the compressor kick in from a completely off state, the log showed a value (again, I dont really know how to correctly read them, but...) 1993W at one point. So, if correct, definitey not something the plug wants to deal with, and makes me think if I WERE to buy a battery generator for fridge backup its gonna have to be something bigger than a 1500 or 1600W battery to even work, regardless of how long
The plug itself, no. If you are using this community driver it does have a built in function to track the min/mix though, just have to turn that setting on. It tracks it until you turn it off. There is a command button to reset it. Not sure why this is at all confusing, the settings and commands are clearly labeled.
I recognize that everything is labeled. What I'm intending to say is that the "language" it is labeled with is not something I am familiar with yet. "Power (Watts) Reporting Threshold" is not something I would be able to explain what it means. I don't know what "reporting" is, per se, and therefore do not know what the chosen threshold would really imply. I don't know where in the HE I would go to just read data. For example, when I want to see what the current voltage going into my UPS is, its right on the LCD screen, or if I want to see the realtime wattage that a device plugged into the UPS is pulling in realtime, there is a window in the app that just shows it. Within HE it seems there are always certain commands you have to set or certain things to run in order to first A) pull the raw data from somewhere, and then B) display that somewhere. I think it is quite reasonable for someone new to everything, like me, to be confused by how all this stuff operates, how to utilize the resources both Hubitat and the community provide, and how to troubleshoot on their own to eventually not have to bother everyone for answers. It is clearly a powerful system, and very customizable, but inherently that means there is a lot of learning that goes into it initially since it is not just plug-and-play like many things are (like the UPS I mentioned, for example). I in no way was implying your driver is inadequate or anything like that.
On my main post there is a link to the settings docs for each device. That has more detailed descriptions, from Zooz, of all the settings.
All the metrics show up on the device page and how often they update will depends on your reporting settings. With Z-devices there is no real-time or live data, it has to be reported from the device to the hub.
What you do with those metric from there is up to you. You could make a small dashboard with power metrics. You could use one of the user made charting apps to chart the data on the hub. You could export the events to a database on another server and chart the metrics from there. Heck you could probably export the metrics to google sheets (somehow) and make a chart there.
Got it, that definitely clarifies something for me. I had it in my mind the live view sort of thing was what people used them for, not just like a "cumulative power use report" type thing, which makes the settings make more sense as well. I was initially thinking of it as analogous the the UPS scenario, but "generating reports" gives me a much better idea of the type of use the power reporting feature of the plug is intended for.
The reports are real-time for when the report comes in. So, periodically, based on the device settings, the plug will send an 'event' to the hub. That means the plug says "what is my power reading right now" and sends that in a message to the hub. The driver, in this case, has code to decipher that message. To see these, you go to the device page and click on the 'events' button. There is a max number of events retained for each device. The settings are max per event type (power for example) and max per attribute (power is also another example). There's also a threshold for how many events before the hub thinks that the device is sending too much traffic. Like if you sent power to report with every 1W change on the fridge, you'd probably end up with an event/report about every second as the load is pretty dynamic
The driver, optionally, can also send a log message with the event. Whether or not that happens and what the log message looks like is up to the developer of the device driver.
Zooz plugs are configurable for power reporting. You can have it report based on the number difference from the last power reading (power report value change), a % difference in change, or on a set time based interval.
Let's say my reading right now is 500W. I set the value threshold to 100W, percent to 10%, and time to 30 minutes. The device will send an event every 30 minutes regardless of the value. If it changes to 551W, I hit the 10% threshold and will get an event. If the value change again to 655W the. I'll hit the value and percent thresholds and will get an event
To constantly see this data, put the device on a dashboard using whichever attribute for the tile. You can also do multiple tiles to see all of them. The dashboard tile will show the value of the last event for that attribute.
The Zen04 is rated for up to 15 amps resistive load. That works well for things like wax melters, but is not suitable for anything with a motor. Your refrigerator motor might damage the plug due to startup current surges. If the plug fails, everything in your refrigerator/freezer might spoil.
If you want to monitor motor driven appliances, the correct device is the Zen15. I am using three of them. One monitors my backup sump pump (1/2 hp); one monitors my clothes washer; one monitors my gas clothes dryer. The Zen16 (correction Zen15) is not suitable for electric clothes dryers as they require 220V/30 amps. Although the Zen15 is not as compact as the Zen04, it is far more suitable for appliances.
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Most gas dryers will use 120V since it only powers the drum. 240V for electrics are to handle the heating element along with the drum.
Agreed on the other points though.
Refrigerators are what's called an inductive load. Meaning they, generally, have a motor that pulls power in pulses. This load can get pretty high depending on the device (like the compressor for an AC unit). A lot of plugs are not rated to handle these types of loads. Many smart plugs are also not rated above 10A where a fridge is, in the US, typically on its own 15A circuit. Probably the cause of your failure.
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Also, as discussed earlier, the Zen04 is more susceptible to erroneous readings than the Zen15. @jtp10181 has filtered out the 'unbelievable' values in the driver, but if the device sends out a 'believable', yet still erroneous value, it can still get through, and possibly affect a rule, or whatever.
Also, and potentially more serious, in an effort to protect equipment, independent of the driver, the plugs seem to shut off power when it senses amps over a certain amount. This too can be erroneous, the plug is shut down and you lose your food. The Zen15 seems more solid than the Zen04 in this regard.
I have the Zen04 set to auto turn on after an outage, so, usually the Zen04 will power back after an erroneous shutdown. So, I'd say if you want reliability, choose the Zen15.
Plus, you can tune the Zen15 down to getting no reports at all, if desired. The Zen04, you'll always get some reports.
@anon47916022 That breakdown was SUPER helpful to understand those details better. I guess it's analogous to pictures and video. A picture is a snapshot in time, a video is the same thing but rapidly snapped in sequence and continuously updated with the next snapshot. So these devices/drivers can take a picture, and if you change the settings to more rapidly take the photos you essentially get the "live view" a UPS will display, but the downside is a ton of traffic over the network so really only good for an in-the-moment test type thing, then change the settings back to less frequent monitoring to cut back on traffic (but still useful to track like the cumulative consumption of power on daily/weekly/monthly basis)
Yeah I've definitely forgotten the non-medical (even though there is direct application when it comes to defibrillation. lol. we'll get to that when we get to that) related content from my 2 semesters of physics in college, but it definitely makes sense to me it's not rated for big devices like that. I wasn't surprised it had shut itself off, I was just hoping it would at least give me a sense of what wattage was going through it to have an actual reading to make decisions on battery generator purchases vs. just like what generic statements are made about what max wattages fridges may or may not average between different units. Definitely wasn't going to be a longtime monitoring sort of thing, just temporarily took it off the fireplace relay to see if I could get the data. I hadn't really considered the ZEN15 because when I came across it I was in my mind only really imagining its use being for wireless on/off control of pumps and whatnot, but didn't realize it also has power monitoring AND is a repeater as well, which, the fridge coincidentally enough, is right in the middle of the the mesh network with the C8 hub and the furthest z-wave device about equidistant in opposite directions.
cc: @velvetfoot
