I have a switched outlet that I would like to monitor. I want to base a scene on whether this plug has power or not.
I know that there are heinously complex things I could do like custom wiring relays to sensors and such, but I’m hoping for a simpler/less expensive solution. what comes to mind is a switch that saves it’s state through a power outage. Power turns on & Vera says, “Hey this light just turned on”. Or maybe a smart energy switch with something plugged into it and a trigger based on watts being used on that switch. But I guess the problem with both of these solutions is that the devices plugged into the switched outlet wouldn’t be on the network.
Maybe an LED night light with a light sensor next to it (ugh, another battery powered device and in a crawlspace too).
Interesting. I’m so stuck on thinking of that to measure whole-house loads. So I would put a load on my outlet. Say a clock. Split the wires and put a clamp around each wire, a trigger my event when it senses any watts. I think that would work! Thanks!
That’s not what I had in mind. I thought you wanted to monitor the recirculation pump’s state or usage.
Perhaps if you explained more clearly what exactly you hope to accomplish, we could suggest a better option than monitoring a clock’s power usage(probably too low to measure).
Long story but I want to know when the outlet turns on to then turn on the circulation pump with an energy switch because the pump is located somewhere else.
I gather from that statement you have a switch for a pump dislocated from the primary residence and therefore, you want to be notified when the switch is turned on manually/physically rather then by a scene or from you Vera.
Well I’m not doing this now but I had an outlet that was energized to run a pump, but the pump was not in the same area. So I wanted to know when the controller energized the outlet so I could then tell Vera to turn on the pump in a different part of the house.
Unless I’m misunderstanding, it sounds like you have a switched outlet that does not power the pump, but you want Vera to monitor that switched outlet and power up the pump on the other side of the house when said switch is turned on, and have Vera power down the pump when said switch is turned off.
Why not replace said switch with a z-wave switch, preferably one that provides instant status. At the pump you install a z-wave receptacle. When the z-wave switch on the other side of the house is turned on, a scene that is triggered when said switch is turned on then turns on the z-wave receptacle tied to the pump. Have the switch trigger Vera when it’s turned off as well and Vera can turn off the z-wave receptacle to turn off the pump.
Yes that’s it, and that’s exactly the kind of thing I was thinking. But switched outlet is in a control box which has an adjustable hydrostat which monitors the temperature in the hot water line and controls the power to the outlet based on that.
Which brings me to a related question. Ideally I would replace this control box in the future with a Vera device. I assume that the hydrostat is a thermister. So ultimately what I would like to do is power the pump based on resistance readings I get from the thermister. I know I can control things based on N/O or N/C circuits that trip, but is there something that monitors resistance that I can use?
This is the critical detail that you have failed to mention for five posts. You cannot replace the “switch” because it is not a wall switch, as we are all assuming, but rather a thermostat.
So, how does this “disconnected” receptacle activate the remote pump now, without Z-Wave?
We still don’t know exactly what type of thermostat, if it is solely a bimetal switch or if it is a powered device that activates a relay to switch the line voltage. Lacking this information, I’m still guessing in the dark, but…
Perhaps you can use a Aeon Labs Aeotec Z-Wave Micro Smart Energy Switch between the thermostat and the receptacle. The microsowtch doesn’t have to power a load, it could simply be used to determine the state of the thermostat(switch).
Frankly the “heinously complex” relay and door/window sensor would probably be my solution to this.
Yeah sorry, I was trying to not make it more complicated than it needed to be but it didn’t work.
The temperature is adjustable in the control box. So the way I understand it, the sensor, which is screwed in to a fitting in the pipe, is a thermister which a control board reads and activates the outlet that the pump is plugged in to. If it was just a snap switch it wouldn’t be adjustable.
Thinking about that though, I don’t know that we need that adjustment in future implementations. I could use a snap switch at whatever temp I need to control power to the pump quite easily with something like a MimoLite I guess. I just need one that threads in for direct contact with the water. Plenty of them available in the 180 - 200 degree range for cars, but not down where I need them. I’m sure I could track it down.
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