Alert on powered outlet

Posted on
Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:28 am
johnf offline
Posts: 10
Joined: Oct 18, 2017

Alert on powered outlet

I just ordered a wireless security system, as I wanted something that would just work out of the box, leaving me just the HA part to tinker with. One of the things that comes with it is a plugin module to turn on a lamp when the alarm goes off. I would like to be able to notify Indigo when that outlet comes on so that I could turn on every light in the house instead of just a lamp. Is that doable?

Posted on
Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:35 am
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: Alert on powered outlet

Is the lamp module a supported Indigo device? If not then it could be tricky to try to know what a generic lamp module is doing when it's not tied to Indigo in any way. If it is supported by Indigo then you can just do a simple trigger:

Screen Shot 2018-02-09 at 9.33.42 AM.png
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Posted on
Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:45 am
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: Alert on powered outlet

Alternatively, if the lamp module is unsupported but you have an energy monitoring outlet (i.e., supported Zwave) that indigo can talk to you can use this trigger:

Screen Shot 2018-02-09 at 9.44.13 AM.png
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Posted on
Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:47 am
johnpolasek offline
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Location: Aggieland, Texas

Re: Alert on powered outlet

There are several plug in Z-wave power monitors that are compatible with Indigo; If you always leave the device on, you would be able to tell when the lamp begins drawing power... There used to be an insteon device (Imeter Solo) that was a pure power monitoring device, but it looks like that has been discontinued.... You might want to use a trigger of Greater than say 10 watts rather than has any change; a lot of the monitors could fluctuate between 1 to 4 watts due to the current required to run the radio receiver from the alarm system.

Posted on
Fri Feb 09, 2018 1:27 pm
johnf offline
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Joined: Oct 18, 2017

Re: Alert on powered outlet

Yes, the appliance/lamp module works with the alarm system, not with Indigo. I use Z Wave, so any solution would need to work with that. It sounds like the way to go is to plug it into an energy monitor. I could then go ahead and plug a lamp into it so that there is additional load when it powers on. I figured that was really all of the interaction that I actually needed between the systems, just to know when the alarm was going off. Maybe I could use some type of sensor to detect the sound of the alarm as well.

Posted on
Fri Feb 09, 2018 2:01 pm
johnpolasek offline
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Joined: Aug 05, 2011
Location: Aggieland, Texas

Re: Alert on powered outlet

If you're into playing with hardware, yet another possibility would be to put a 110V relay on the lamp module instead of or in addition to the lamp and let the relay contacts go to the GIO on a raspberry Pi that's set up to use Karl's PiBeacon plugin... You could throw that together for probably less than $30 in parts and it would give you a for sure trigger to Indigo.

Posted on
Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:16 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Alert on powered outlet

I just bought one of these to replace an iMeter solo. Only been running for about a week but seems to be working nicely.

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