I had been tinkering for a while with using smart plugs with energy monitoring to determine the start and stop times of (dumb) devices such as a dryer, washing machine, or washer-dryer.
While creating flows, it was a constant balancing act between not getting a notification too late and avoiding false positive notifications, especially with different programs that have varying energy profiles.
I think I’ve found a solution.
For all my dumb devices, I use two flows:
The first one is for determining when the device has started, and at the end of this flow, also disable this flow to prevent false positive notifications of the device starting again.
I use the second flow to determine when the device has stopped. You won’t have any issues with the first flow because it’s turned off. At the end of the second flow, the first flow is re-enabled for the next program of the respective device.
I hope someone finds this useful.
