I'm trying to achieve an automation, but I'm having zero luck... I'm trying to make a laundry done notification for my wife. I have put a smart plug on the outlet, and set it up to run when power draw goes above 10 watts. That part works fine.
I'm having trouble with the end part. My washer will drop down to 1-0 watts numerous times during the cycle, so I can't just use a trigger if power drops below 5w. Someone made a "better laundry monitor". Which would solve the issue where the power would need to stay below 5w for multiple cycles. But my smart plug, the sengled ZigBee plug, only reports power if it changes.
Tldr
Is there a way to force her plug to refresh it's state multiple times? I see the refresh option in RM, but the plug is not listed.
If the usage doesn't change, won't a refresh--which pulls the latest value--just get the same value as the previous report? I'm not sure I see how this would help. But it's also not clear how you have your automation set up. Here is a rule I wrote a while back that works for me:
You will have to adjust the power (watt) values according to what your machine uses and your plug reports, and you'll possibly have to adjust the timeout depending on the length of fill cycles and whatnot (mine is pretty fast--and never really stops for too long, even when filling, as I think a lot of frontloaders don't), but that's the general idea.
Some people also use apps like the one you mentioned. I haven't, so I can't compare.
If neither of these approaches work for you, more information may be helpful to figure out why. Right now, it only seems like the waiting for elapsed time is the problem, with a rule can help with, as demonstrated in the post I linked to above. I'd be shocked if a custom app designed for this didn't have a way to account for that, too, though.
I've tried using the wait option. I set it to wait 10 seconds after the power dropped below 5w. It was my understanding that if power went back above 5w during that time, the wait timer would be interrupted/cancelled until the next time power went below 5w. Unfortunately I just got the notification every time the power dropped, delayed by 10s.
I tried the better laundry monitor app, setting the power threshold to below 5w, and the number of report cycles required for to 3. But it never triggered. This app requires the plug to report under "x" watts "y" times. But the plug reports the power status, then doesn't report again unless the power changes, so the app never sees more than one report. I went into the device settings and pressed refresh there 3 times, which did cause the app to see it's required # of reporting below the threshold and trigger the notification.
You can use following conditional rule triggered by power change:
if power is < 5w then Notify XY (delay X seconds) cancelable
else
Cancel delayed actions
If for some reason plug will report several changes bellow 5watts, then you can use variable that will be changed between 1/0 after the power is above 5w and use it in condition.
Perhaps if you posted a copy of your rule someone could give you some pointers. What you describe can definitely be done with the proper structure in your rule.
