I want to monitor the power consumption by the AC adapters for some motorized scooters. I'm looking find out when the scooters have reached full enough charge to where they're not pulling additional wattage. And to then programmatically tell the switch controlling them to turn off.
Turning them on will be handled by voice control, as in "Alexa, turn on scooter chargers". That or a daily scheduled event, followed by some wattage checking logic.
I wrestled with a similar idea some years ago with Z-Wave devices and never really met with the kind of reliability I wanted.
I'm in the US and these are wall voltage chargers.
I'm debating whether or not I want to monitor them individually or several all together. Right now I have them all being controlled by a Lutron appliance device, which is expensive and doesn't have power monitoring.
The goal here isn't detailed monitoring or tracking of consumption, rather to avoid them being charged constantly. I have done this in the the past successfully with work shop nicad battery packs by simply using a timed interval. The higher capacity of these makes that less than optimal.
Chargers malfunction, battery management systems as well, so I want to avoid frying the battery packs by only charging for as long as they need.
So my question is which plug-in zigbee power monitoring switch is the least tedious to work with?
Well your needs are rather complicated, but IMO, I like these zigbee plugs- Iris V1. In my experience, they are the fastest to respond to commands and I have quite a few different types. They do report power consumption, and importantly to me, remember their previous state. Some plugs when the power goes off and then comes back on, will default to an OFF state. Can still be gotten cheaply on Ebay, so you can try one out.
I was going to jump in and say "I have a similar use case, and I used timed cycling", but then I read your whole message.
I'm using the Zen20 Power Strip (Z-Wave) for my power tool battery chargers, and have considered using power monitoring to govern the charger, unfortunately, I've never got to implementation. I've also used the Zen15 power switch, and use it to monitor my sump pumps (intermittent current). Trouble is, I haven't tried anything where I use regular monitoring of the current to determine to end the cycle, so I'm not sure how reliably/well they report that.
I'm using a Qubino in a box to monitor my Radon Fan (Steady State current while operating), and I have a rule that monitors for it to drop below a steady state value. That works well, but again with a changing state (e.g. charger operation), I'm not sure how well that would work either.
Zigbee? I think the current generation SmartThings Zigbee plugs monitor power, but again I don't know how reliably you could monitor a Charger....
Wish I had more ideas, but you might look at the Laundry Monitoring threads on the forum, there are a couple of techniques for monitoring washer/dryer current that might work.
They report power in watts. My only disappointment with them is that they have a limit of 12 amps and there are a couple cases where I"m closer to 15 with the load. I think you can get others for less $$$ as well.
The SmartThings 2018 (current gen) Zigbee plugs mentioned above are my favorite, though as mentioned, they do have a 12 A limit. The Iris v2 plug (and probably any Centralite plug that looks like that) is/was the same. Not sure if that's a problem for you. The Ikea Trådfri outlets have a 15 A (or at least 1800 W as stated) limit, but they don't do power metering; they're the only other Zigbee plug I'm familiar enough with off the top of my head. If you didn't specifically request Zigbee, the Zooz ZEN15 is rated for up to 15 A, and the Zooz ZEN20 would get you five individually monitor-able and controllabe outlets together also rated for 15 A, but both are, of course, Z-Wave. Both sound like they'd work well except for that one little thing.
The GE Zigbee plug claims to do 1800 W, and the box says it does power metering. I have no personal experience with this generation. Maybe that could work? Their in-wall Zigbee outlet probably could too, but that's apparently either discontinued or out of stock. (Their Z-Wave devices--and Z-Wave devices in general for these categories--seem much easier to find.)
Actually doing the monitoring should be fairly easy with a rule, assuming these do something like a fairly high wattage while charging before dropping to a fairly low wattage when done (trigger on the high wattage, wait for low, possibly adding a small delay in case that's something it does throughout the cycle as well?). Looks likt eh de
Soooooooo Ajax, who sell these, KNOW about the problem. I found a forum and the Ajax person you want to communicate with is called Ajay. There is an issue on some versions of hardware and firmware, that if there is a voltage spike over 250v, then CLICK. It switches off. Newer versions don't do it. So buy wisely.
I also have a PV and home battery system and to export electricity the voltage has to be slightly higher than the grid voltage, so that may also have an effect.
Once I found that out I put a time domain graph and my voltage seems to max out at 253+v - bear in mind, we harmonised with the EU at 220/230v. But we didn't.
I have emailed Ajax 2 weeks ago, no reply at all. Not very good. I also messaged the seller from Amazon. Nada as well. Ah well.... Won't buy from them again. Caveat emptor fellow Amazonians!
Anyway
How does such shoddy equipment get allowed to be sold on Amazon?
I bought these throwing the dice on 50/50 based reviews. I failed.
Don't be disappointed, don't buy them.
plug in
pair
move to equipment socket
turn equipment on test functionality
3 - 10 seconds CLUNK. Turned off. Both of them
One of the plugs I can't even get the 13amp plug into as the prongs/sockets inside don't match the moulded plug holes.
This is a known issue that affects some of the plugs produced in the last year. Unfortunately, a lot of resellers just try to sell what they have on stock no matter what the quality is. Don't know why, but I thought that Ajax customers support in the UK is better than buying directly from China.. Nope!
This random switching-off issue was patched a few months ago with a firmware update for some Tuya manufacturers. But you need a Tuya Zigbee hub for the firmware update. An alternative way to upgrade the firmware is via Zigbe2MQTT OTA upgrade system. But all this is a lot of trouble if you can - return these plugs to the seller.
I'm not 100 % on how I actually viewed the firmware version, as the 2nd plug was installed post your driver install.
The 2nd plug does not show the firmware version, unlike the first did as per my initial screenshot.
I guess I could swap the driver to another to see if that shows up again as standard zigbee outlet or whatever it was a hat I had installed at the time.
Unless you have another suggestion?
Its difficult to say whether or not this problem is present in the 2nr plug, without waiting x amount of time to wait and see.
The 'tv' one was initially installed before you helpfully replied and as such had a few different drivers installed one by one when I was trying to get it working.
Odd that the software side now definitely looks different. I wonder if its worth starting over with the first, which has odd child devices too.
Edit
The kettle hasn't been touched. But it has switched itself off at 5pm today....despite not being used.
247 V is very close to the maximum voltage limit (250V), that Tuya engineers have decided is dangerously high and in order to 'protect' us, their firmware switches off the plug (!!!)
This automatic switching off does not depend on the driver or on the home automation hub. It happens with Tuya's own Zigbee gateway also, it happens even if the device is working offline and not paired to any hub.
The problem is observed with specific chipset only, which Tuya manufacturers started to use in their devices about a year ago.
You can delete the first device and then pair it again to get rid of the component devices and the artifacts left from the other drivers that you have experimented with, but this will not solve the switching-off issue. The only solution is to update the firmware to the latest version. If you know someone with a Tuya gateway, you can pair the two plugs temporarily to their gateway, update the firmware and then pair it again to HE. Or ask the seller if they can do this upgrade for you?
I'm asking amazon, contacted the seller through amazon. I'm guessing that if I plan on getting a few of these, then it may be better and less hassle to purchase a hub?
I can get one for about a tenner.
You seem to know a lot about this - would you be confident that if I buy a hub, the upgrade would sort this out?
My issue is that the kettle hadn't been used for hours. Thus, the spike didn't cause the physical switch off.
