Is Sinope the only available propane tank monitor that works with Hubitat?
I would prefer a WiFi device as my Hubitat is about 200' away from the tank. The Sinope is Zigbee, and that would be my only Zigbee device so far, so I'm concerned about the distance.
They now offer only a 4G LTE version. The good news is that it's on sale for $149.99 (normally $249.99). The bad news is that it requires a $14.99 annual fee. See this page: Generac LTE LP Fuel Level Monitor | Generac Power Products
I have a RPi running Genmon connected to my Generac that gets data from the evolution controller and feeds data into HE. Genmon has an Add-On for TankUtility. Here is the original feature request for it with a little history:
My generator runs on natural gas so I don't own a TankUtility device. I saw there was an Add-On in Genmon for this device so wanted to throw that out there as a possible option. As referenced in the Github link above there is an API to the device so assume that works whether it uses LTE or Wifi.
Would assume someone could come up with a driver using that same API to pull information from it into HE without Genmon.
I recently purchased the Sinope. The signal strength seems pretty good on it. It paired very easily and picked the correct driver. After about 2 weeks of uptime, things have been working fine with no dropouts.
I do have plenty of Zigbee repeating devices, but the Sinope picked an Ikea light strip that is probably the physical furthest device from the propane tank to repeat through. I don't know if the Sinope is 200 feet capable, but if you could get a good repeater somewhere between the Sinope and the Hubitat, it may work fine, provided there aren't many/any obstructions in the way like garages, sheds, trees or other dense and metallic things that would attenuate the signal.
My Tank Utility device seemingly died, or at the very least I cannot get it into pairing mode and/or cannot get it to rejoin my network after the batteries died.
I went with the Sinope to keep things local, it is about the same price as the Tank Utility and it doesn't require a fee.
The downside is that the Sinope won't work with my Genmon generator monitor app, but I guess I don't care that much that I would pay a fee or want to have a cloud based monitor that could be killed at any time.
Thanks for the update. I bought our Tank Utility monitor years ago, when we had a remote vacation home that could be difficult to access in winter. We ended up moving there full time shortly after I purchased it (during Covid), then sold that place recently and built a new home not too far away (much easier access). Now I can't find the little magnet device one needs to change settings on the Tank Utility (as I recall) so my "monitoring" involves walking around back and looking at the gauge. I feel like a caveman!
I also use Genmon and am also on natural gas. Genmon also has an add on for the mopeka tank sensors. While I have no use for it on my Gen, I do use mopekas on all (4) 20 lb tanks on our (2) campers and will say they are very accurate.
When I had a house (now moved in apartment) I had a propane tank monitor which was nothing more than two temp sensors spaced vertically by few inches. The physics is very simple. The temperature of liquid portion is significantly higher than evaporated. Sensor was magnetically attached near bottom of the tank and both temp sensors had the same reading when propane level inside tank was above both sensors. But when propane level became in between sensors top one was reading significantly less temp.
For the DIY version all what is needed - is two temp sensors spaced vertically by few inches.
Somehow I didn't get the notice to renew my Generac MobileLink subscription, and I noticed that I wasn't getting any updates on the weekly tests. They didn't try too hard...things just stopped working, lol.