My power provider sells me power at the wholesale price. Prices can vary from -50c/Kw (they pay you to use power) to $1+/Kw depending on the day and the time of day. I therefore want to set two variables as the on/off times for the car charger.
Even if I have to go to the App and set the Variables manually, how can I build a flow to start at the time according to the value of a variable? If I could input the variables when I press a virtual device even better.
You could try the app Power by the Hour, depends if it will fetch your prices.
That app Downloads the prices for the next couple of hours.
And if it has the prices you can build a flow around it.
https://homey.app/en-us/app/com.gruijter.powerhour/Power-by-the-Hour/
Also interesting: The Piggy Bank app has a price dependent EV charge function among other stuff. The app is quite technical though, but the dev is very helpful.
Or the app Heating controller, which also can switch devices (heating, but not necessarily) on or off based on dynamic prices.
Other solution for your situation is to use the app IcalCalendar App voor Homey | Homey and use a calendar to manually define the start and stop time for charging. The app gives the triggers for start and stop off the event which you can use to start and stop charging.
(I use this for the situation I want to be sure the charging starts at a specific time, and not based on ālowest priceā logic from pbth app).
