New MultihubReactor Sneak Peak from Patrick Rigney

I really liked Reactor on Vera and adding dedicated Triggers is a really great improvement.

My only concern is that MHR requires an external machine to run it on and this is the reason I have ignored NR on HE.

I use my C7 as my Security system (lots of battery-operated sensors and sirens etc) so I don't want another device that needs battery backup. My C7 can run for days on my dedicated battery backup system, however, all of my Server and Comms gear only stay online for 15 minutes before the UPS shuts them all down.

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Nice, what battery backup system do you use here?

Can do blockly in node-red too. Just fyi.

Probably not as seamlessly as OH3 though as you still need the input/output nodes in node-red (but that is why it is HA hub agnostic, too...).

This one:

Days? :grinning: Definitely not on that little thing. Certainly a few hours is possible as per my testing.

I ran the numbers, the C7 load is tiny @ 0.022 Amps and I'm running genuine high quality 3500 mAh cells. I shut down after 12 hours, so yeah days is a slight exaggeration as I don't run it that long.

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Interesting. Everything I'd read prior indicated around 7 hours so this rating is a genuine surprise. I'm using one also (although with an undoubtedly lower quality Chinese cell) and have a cut-off rule at around 3 hours just to be on the safe side. Now you've prompted me to do my own testing to see how far it will go :grinning:

That was because no-one tested the true power draw at the wall with a proper Power meter. The previous testing was done with a USB power meter (by @Rxich ) and so no-one really knew what the true power draw number was - 0.3 Amps turned out to be quite inaccurate (for a C7, the older hubs prolly use more power due to being built on an older Chip Fab process). Even at that load, that's still 11 hours & 40 mins runtime.

PS, here's the web calc I use.

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Cool thanks for the info. Very interesting. I've just ordered a similar but 2 battery device as a backup for an rPi. It will be interesting to see how that performs. What kind of life would you expect from such a setup? I have no idea what an rPi would draw (it's a 3b, but I'm also thinking to apply one to a series 4 RPi too if it works ok). This is the device...

THB 573.67 48%OFF | Original 18650 UPS Pro Power Supply Device Extended Two USBA Port for Raspberry Pi 4 B / 3B+ /3B, Not Include 18650 Battery

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Thanks, yeah the cheap chinese power meter is definitely not lab grade equipment, and I don't have another meter to measure mA, with kludging a bunch of connectors & wires together and putting my DMM in the circuit.
It was on a C4, so driving the hub plus the nortek stick would use more power than the C7 alone.
IIRC it was about 10 hours on a genuine panasonic 18650 3400mAh cell for my C4 and I called it off at that point.

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My high school electronics training is a bit rusty, 1.6watts @ 5 volts is about 320mA. What am I doing wrong? 0.022 A seems way to low
image

I just checked my C7 and got about 120mA draw at idle with 10 devices & no rules

I used a Killawatt style device so Im going on what it showed was being consumed from a 240v socket - the load is somewhat variable tho.

Kill-A-Watt (and similar) devices are typically pretty accurate, as you said.

If you measured 1.6 W on the AC mains side, and we assume the low end of the typical 80%-90% range for the AC-DC conversion (which represents the minimum power consumption from your battery), you're consuming something like 1.6 W * 0.8 = 1.28 W on the DC side.

At 5 VDC nominal, that is 1.28 W / 5 V = 0.256 A.

Your 3500 mAh battery should last 3.5 / 0.256 ~= 13.67 h. Which is indeed pretty great, but it isn't quite 159 hours as discussed elsewhere. :wink: I assume some digits got out of whack in all of the unit conversions.

If you go the other direction on the tolerances and empirical numbers (90% eff, 3.8 W @ 240 VAC), you get a lower end on the range of 3.5 / ((0.9 * 3.8) / 5) ~= 5.11 h.

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AH, OK, I have a kill-a-watt also, love that device. So the 0.022 amp draw makes more sense at 240V. I tried to find documents on the hub's power drawer but was unsuccessful.

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Here’s the measurement:

I’ll get out my spare C7 and redo them without the battery UPS in the loop.

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Where are you measuring that? On the 240V side or the DC side?

I think you're in AUS. So, your line voltage is 240 V (rms). Your meter measurement if on the AC side is almost certainly in A (rms). Power = V (rms) * A (rms) = 240 * .021 = 5.04 W.

If you're measuring on the DC side, then I have no idea (which could always be true, regardless). :wink:

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240v at the wall socket.

Correct.

Ok, so your AC real power consumption is the meter reading multiplied by 240. 5W seems high, but maybe you're charging the battery or something.

For battery life, you need to know your DC current consumption. The worst case is that 100% of your AC power is being consumed as DC power. In practice this is more likely 80-90%.

To get DC current consumption you divide DC power by the pack voltage, presumably nominal 5 Vdc.

Then to get battery life duration you divide battery capacity (in Ah) by the DC current consumption.

You can't use the meter current capacity directly in the battery capacity calculation.

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Greetings, @dJOS and everyone. I've been lurking on these forums for quite a while, and maybe it's about time I chime, at least to introduce myself. I'm the author of Reactor for Vera and openLuup (and over a dozen other Vera plugins), and now what I call Multi-System Reactor (although I really like the "Multihub" switch in the topic title...). I'm very much a Hubitat newb, but it's been fun learning and getting a new perspective (I also use Vera, of course, and Hass). MSR is currently in a developer preview. I'm happy to answer questions if anyone has any.

Absolutely right, although the majority of people using it currently in the preview/test seem to run it on a cheap RPi, and there's also a docker container for Synology NAS systems (x86). I think the NAS docker containers are ultimately going to be a big share, as I think a lot of HA users have NAS systems already in their homes, and the load MSR places on the system is, so far, miniscule. Below is the load average on an RPi4 connected to three Veras, my openLuup system, my HomeAssistant system, and my Hubitat (total over 400 devices):

pi@raspberrypi:~/Documents/MSR $ uptime
 08:21:58 up 1 day, 13:41,  3 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
pi@raspberrypi:~/Documents/MSR $

To be clear, I'm not building this to replace anything. It's meant to be an enhancement for the people that need what it offers. As I said in the missive that @mailtomatte reposted here, choices... more choices.

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Hello and Welcome!

I have a quick suggestion. Please forgive me if this is way off base,or you're strictly not interested.
I have some familiarity with an earlier product of yours, because I used Vera many years ago (I still have a Vera Plus in my "drawer of shame"). It was a great product, on a not-so-great system.
One of the things that I personally believe is really lacking in Hubitat is a simple, easy to use, "rules" system on the phone. I believe that most users don't want to use a screen, don't have the capability of using Docker on a NAS, or don't want a RPI. (Please note: I have all three of those, and so do most of the inhabitants of this forum. I'm talking about the majority of users - not us!)
Do you think that it's possible to modify the Reactor to run on a phone with an easy to use UI?

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