How to check condition for certain amount of time before flow execution?

Questions & Help
1

Hello,
I have fibaro power socket to which I connected device which I try to monitor by measuring the power consumption.
If the device is idle, it only uses about 100 watts, when it is fully working it uses about 1000W. If there is some small issue the power might drop to 800W or 600W.
I set up the flow to send me notification when the power is lower than 900W. Unfortunately it seems the power consumption reporting is not very consistent and I often receive notification even when the device is working normally.
So I’m thinking about changing the condition to something like - if the power consumption is below 900W for 1 minute - then send notification.
I can’t seems to find the way to add the time condition to the flow.
Could you please help?
Thank you.
Peter

2

Shot in the dark here, but…how about activating a flow that checks, set a pause for a minute, check and notify if it’s still below, then disable itself?

1 Like
3

You could use one of the timer apps that are in the store. The principle would be to use one flow to set the timer running when the power drops below 900, another to reset the timer when it goes back above 950 and the third flow that sends the report when the timer expires.

2 Likes
4

Additional, the “is washing machine done” topic might be interesting!
There’s some power metering related actions explained.

5

If I understand the use case correctly, it is a bit more complicated than @Adrian_Rockall described.
The power of the device in idle state is about 100 W. 100 W is also less than 900 W. So there would be no difference if the device has a problem (600 - 800 W) or just went into idle state (100 W), the notification will be send in both cases, because the power is in both cases less than 900 W
Therefore, the flow that is started after the timer expires needs to check the power again:

Flow #3 (like Adrian suggested)

When…
– Timer is finished
And…
– power is < 900 W (logic card)
– power is > 500 W (logic card, or an other value)
Then…
– Send notification

2 Likes
6

Thank you for great suggestions. :+1:
I will go ahead and implement this now.