[Beginner] Turn electricity off when you shut down PC

I found out that my PC setup with two monitors was pulling around 50 watts even when it was powered off. I made some flows that detects when the power is off and shuts off the electricity. I have a button on the wall that toggles the power on/off.

What is needed
Homey
App: Better Logic
App: Simple log
Power-plug with a power meter. I use a TP-link HS110.
A Zigbee or Z-wave button (I use Aqara switch

Flow 1
When the powers change, and power is less than 75 watts. Sett Boolean Variable “StationarypcON” to false. Otherwise, set Boolean variable to true. This changes the Variable so Homey always know if the pc is on or off.

Flow 2
Detects when power is below 75 watts and the Boolean Variable “StationarypcON” is true. Starts Flow 3 after 1 min. Sets the variable to False.
I have made this second flow to prevent the flow to trigger when I am just restarting my pc.

Flow 3
If after one minute, power is still less than 75 watts and the Boolean Variable is false, shuts the pc off and adds a line to my Simple log.

Flow 4
For the button:
button

I use the app Netscan to ping port 139 of a PC. I do that every 10 seconds to determine if I need to power down the lights of the desk. This way you know if a PC is running or not. We have 2 PC’s next to eachother so I can even see wich PC is up and running Very handy.

WARNING! Be sure to turn off wake on lan or the PC will boot up again because of Homey scanning him every 10 seconds :slight_smile: (as I have set it up)

I’ll check how much power is drained when shutdown, 50 watts sounds like a whole lot!
Thanks for sharing!

1 Like

@Willybits,

The App is incompatible in V2.

No it is not, I am using it in V2
Netscan :0.3.1

@Willybits,
when i want to install the app it says the app is incompatible with your software.

And u downloaded it from the appstore without editing the app.json file for wrong compatibility?

It has been on my homey for over a year now, so I have not installed it on V2 myself.
Shame it has not been updated for people to use it on V2 then

Ok, fair enough. So it runs on 2.0 when u got it installed before upgrading to 2.0. When alr on 2.0 the app has wrong compatibility and won’t install.

I’ll have a look, for Smart Presence it was (almost) just enough to up the compatibility…

If you have a netgear router you can use the netgear app to monitor if a pc is on or not. And you can also use it to wake the pc with WOL. I use it to switch on/off my son’s docking station to save power when the laptop isnt used.

For netScan it’s enough to up the compatibility. @Btwvince did a PR already in January. You can download the app here and install in through the CLI.

Here it is working like a sharm!