UV filter - "not working" notification with Vera?

Community Playground General Discussions
1

@home I have an ultraviolet (UV) water filter, together with other water purifying systems.

As you might know the UV filter works with a UV lamp. That lamp has a time life of around 10000hours and the only way to know if it is working or not is to confirm with a led it has on the power adaptor.

Since all the gear is installed at the machinery house I have no way to confirm if the UV lamp is working correctly without going to the… machinery house (I like to call the machinery house ;D).

Is there a Zwave appliance to tell Vera to tell me the UV lamp it’s not working? :slight_smile:

Thank you! :slight_smile:

2

You could use an Aeon Labs smart energy switch that gives you energy usage. I would think would able to see the difference in power usage when UV lamp goes out.

John

3

Thanks John! That really sounds to be an option. I suppose the power input with the lamp on should be much higher than just the power adapter with no lamp.

4

The smart energy switch reads the power usage of the device plugged in. If the uv bulb dies the power usage should read 0.

  • Garrett
5

Perfect! Thanks Garrett! :slight_smile:

6

Actually the UV Light intensity degrades before the light goes out. You should NOT wait until the lamp dies … So measuring the power is the wrong thing to do. It will provide a “total failure” indication.

I have a digital UV meter to measure the strength of the light on my water purification system (Sanitron UV System 20Gal/min + digital monitor)

It’s currently reading around 70% (It was new in November with a reading of 100%). At this time I do not know if the decay, or, the resulting quality degradation is linear. I want to see how low it goes after 1 year. It has configurable alarm output (dry contact switch) that I could use to signal an alarm condition. I had not previously considered automating this … there are folks that have hacked up the Aeon door switch to replace the reed switch with an external switch closure that I could use as a Z-Wave sensor.

7

end[quote=“garrettwp, post:4, topic:171737”]The smart energy switch reads the power usage of the device plugged in. If the uv bulb dies the power usage should read 0.[/quote]If you have one lamp, that is correct. I’ve got two HVAC UV lamps per switch, along with some Lua and SND for the email notification if a lamp burns out, so I halved the wattage it monitors.

[code]
local lul_watts1=luup.variable_get(“urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:EnergyMetering1”,“Watts”,197)
local lul_tmp = luup.variable_get(“urn:upnp-org:serviceId:SwitchPower1”, “Status”, 197)

if (( tonumber(lul_watts1)<36 ) and (lul_tmp == “1”))
then
luup.call_action( “urn:upnp-ap15e-com:serviceId:SND1”, “SendMail”, { subject = ‘UV Bulb Burned Out’, body = ‘’ }, 158 )
return true
else
return false
end [/code]