I used Athom Homey Pro in my home to control and overview electrical devices for some years now.
Smart plugs with energy meters (both from AEON and Aqara) are used to monitor the my groundwater pumps.
The pumps are started and stopped by floating switches (integrated with the pumps) that trig at low and high water level respectively.
I use Homey to monitor the operation remotely using the input from the energy meters.
Homey show current power consumption in real time and I also use insights to monitor the power consumption over time (hrs to month).
This is a great way to see the health of the pumps and also if a problem has occurred.
My experience of the system has accumulated over time and I know that if the floating device get stuck in its upper or lower position the pump will not start at all or run continuously until the electrical motor burns.(60EUR)
I have gone so far that I created redundancy so I can stop one pump and remotely switch over to another pump to keep everything functional.
This is a blessing since it is not so fun to leave a nice party for pump maintenance duties and a flooded basement.
Much cooler to take up the phone and tell the friends what I am doing with a Gin Tonic in the other hand.
Now it is time for the next level creating an alarm function with push sms or email if something happens with the pumps.
But the pumps live their own life to a certain extent controlled by the floating devices that regulate more frequent on/offs if there is a lot of ground water.
What about creating a flow that checks the energy meters every hour and
if the hourly energy consumption is zero - the pump is dead or a fuse is blown.
If the hourly power consumption is >=300Wh the pump is stuck running continuously.
In both cases switching over to the spare pump - will be the thing to do
I have tried to find out how to realize this but I get stuck.
Found ”Power by The Hour” but it seems a bit overkill for this application.
Hi @Paul_Skoglund ,
I do not understand your question,
if you have the energy meter for your pump connected to Homey Pro, you can create your flow as described.
Instead of sms I would use WhatsApp (I think telegram also works).
And if you have never done a flow before, start start with standard flows and probably with two of them - one, if there is no (or low) consumption and one if there is high consumption.
Hi Dirk, thanks for your reply.
I have done simple flows for lights on off etc.
Also other simple flows using vibration sensor and a push message to my phone - works fine.
But nothing like this with the pumps. I have tried but failed due to lack of knowledge how to handle the fact that the pumps work intermittently with an on/off frequency that varies.
My question is that I ask for advice when it comes to arrange the flow in Homey.
If I set a rule to give me an alarm when the energy consumption is zero, that alarm would trig when the floating device shuts of the pump (ie every 5 to 20 minutes depending on the amount of ground water entering the pit)
I thought that comparing the hourly energy consumption with a minimum value (0 or a little more) and a maximum value (around 300Wh) and let this trig a message could be a solution.
But I do not know if this is doable and I also do not know how to realize it.
I find no way to access the hourly energy consumption from the energy meters.
May be I need a separate flow for this - ie to catch the value hourly and subtract the value from the previous hour, store it and compare to my min and max values for trigging the alarm.
So if it is obvious how to do I would appreciate some advice - preferably with concrete flow actions
While I would think about checking every 10 minutes or half an hour. In the worst case, if you check only every hour the pump might be wrong for much more than an hour. Depends on how early you need to know that its not working and how robust it is, when running at full power.
have fun!
Well I have to add: #Brunnepump Aqara Energi should be the the Energi value of your Aqara Smart Plug, #LastBrunnepump is a variable , you have to create, and #Ergebnis Komma Zahl is the result of the temporary variable calculation.
So you need the Temporary Variables App and WhatsApp App or you have to adjust to your needs.
