i want to control a wall plug that will drive a contactor to power an 8 kW heater in a sauna. I want to make sure the heater then turns off if forgotten. So I'd like to check time when turned on, and turn off after maybe 2 hours (if not manually turned off first). Is this type of control possible with the rules machine??
Yes.
The trigger would be the wall plug turning on.
The action would turn the wall plug off with a delay of 2 hours.
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Any of the Zooz products have auto on/auto off settings. This is totally independent of the hub.
I have each of my electric heaters plugged into one, as well as the espresso maker, lol.
I don't use it for remote control, but it turns them off after a half hour.
It should be noted that these plugs are not fool proof, and you have to ask yourself what will happen if it stays on. However, it does add an extra level of protection if you forget to turn the thing off.
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The main concern here is that you have to have a switch capable of handling an 8 KW load that can interface with Hubitat. I am assuming that this is a 220V circuit. The load is nearly 40 amp. For safety, you would need at 50 amp switch. That is well beyond the capability of typical home automation devices.
If the sauna has a digital controller, it would have a relay to turn the power on and off. You might be able to modify the controller to connect with Hubitat, but it might not be easy.
see:
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The downside to my suggestion is that the button on the plug has to be pushed. You could have a wireless switch, eg ZEN34, to turn it on and off and if you forgot, the plug would turn itself off in 2 hours. Plus, you could start it remotely to warm it up, if that's a thing with saunas.
Thanks for the pointer to the Zooz remote plugs with timer capabilities. I looked at the ZEN05 and it has the perfect parameter:
Auto-off Timer
Parameter 2: Use this parameter to set the auto turn-off timer: the time after which you want the Outdoor Plug to automatically turn off once it has been turned on. The number entered as value corresponds to the number of minutes.
Values: 0 - timer disabled (default); 1-65535 (minutes)
Size: 4 byte dec
Seems perfect. This will allow turning on and off the sauna (via a 40 Amp contactor that the ZEN05 will activate) remotely with a dashboard on a phone. It takes about 40 mins for the sauna to warm up. If turnoff is ever forgotten the ZEN05 will then turn it off after a couple of hours.
Great support from this forum!
Or like this:
trigger: switch turns on and stays on for 2 hours
Action: turn off switch
This way if the thing is turned off before the time expires there is no action. And if the switch is turned off and back on the time resets to two more hours.
I learned that using a motion sensor to control a light. But the concept works for a lot of timed things.
