palayman Posted February 12, 2019 Posted February 12, 2019 I took the plunge and added the Z-Wave dongle to my ISY tonight. Went pretty well, then added a couple of Zooz ZEN15 power plugs with energy reporting to monitor my sump pumps. Issue now is how best to do this. Most of the time neither pump should be on. Want to get notified if they start having a duty cycle of more than trivial percentage of the time. Perhaps 10%. Can get a rough idea of the energy usage by forcing them on. I guess I can check the power consumption after a regular period of time and estimate how long they were on. Any thoughts or suggestions on a programming angle? Thanks, Paul PS Call me paranoid, I have Wireless Tag water Sensors in both sumps, an old web cam on one and a backup water powered pump as well.
MWareman Posted February 12, 2019 Posted February 12, 2019 I decided not to put any active device inline with my sump or ejector pumps - just one more device that can fail. Very last thing I need is a flooded basement due to a failed zwave (or Insteon) device. I opted to get a current sensing relay to sense when the pump is running without any possibility of the sensing being able to cause a pump failure. I send the output of the current sensing relay to a non-alarm Elk zone - but it could easily be sent to an iolinc or zwave io device. I’m still working thru some program algorithms. I did once burn out a pump due to the float getting stuck up. So, looking for excessive on time is a fantastic idea (one I wish I had thought of before having to replace that pump). I’m also looking at a water level sensor as a secondary input to alert when something is wrong. https://www.adafruit.com/product/464 but don’t have that implemented yet.
palayman Posted February 12, 2019 Author Posted February 12, 2019 22 minutes ago, MWareman said: I’m also looking at a water level sensor as a secondary input to alert when something is wrong. https://www.adafruit.com/product/464 but don’t have that implemented yet. As I said I'm using one of these https://store.wirelesstag.net/products/wireless-water-moisture-sensor-2-0 Pretty cheap ($22) once you have the tag controller. Seem to be very reliable and have a long battery life. Batteries are still at 99% after more than a year. There is even a node server. Have other tags spread around the house and in the freezer and refrigerator. Paul
palayman Posted February 12, 2019 Author Posted February 12, 2019 One of the variables I get back from the Zooz device is total power in kWh (since the last reset I guess). Is there any way to store this in a variable? Paul
Screw Loose Dan Posted February 12, 2019 Posted February 12, 2019 I recently burnt up a sump pump due to a blocked discharge pipe (ice blockage). I've changed the discharge so that shouldn't be an issue again, but I also added an Aeotec Smart Switch w/energy monitoring. I'm still working on how to best monitor this. I really had no idea how often the sump ran and for how long it normally ran for when triggered. So, my first step was to setup the Aeotec Smart Switch to immediately update upon significant changes to energy usage (it defaults to sending updates on an interval). Then I made a very simple program to send me an email when the current amps wasn't zero and again when it was zero (so I knew when it stopped). In my case, I found it rarely runs more than once or twice a day and when it runs it's on for ~ 4 seconds. I'm thinking my next step will be to make a notification if the pump runs for more than a minute or two at a time. Interestingly, I had also bought the same eTape water level that @MWareman linked. I'm thinking of hooking it up to either a RPi or a ESP8266 (microcontroller) so that it periodically sends updates on the water level in the sump. I'll be able to graph water level in the sump over time. I don't know that it will all that useful for me, but more a curiosity. But, haven't worked out the details on the actual implementation yet.
MWareman Posted February 12, 2019 Posted February 12, 2019 1 hour ago, palayman said: As I said I'm using one of these https://store.wirelesstag.net/products/wireless-water-moisture-sensor-2-0 Pretty cheap ($22) once you have the tag controller. Seem to be very reliable and have a long battery life. Batteries are still at 99% after more than a year. There is even a node server. Have other tags spread around the house and in the freezer and refrigerator. Paul I have these tags as well - they are good for if the sump overflows or sensing when very near the top. You cannot submerge them - which limits their use case. They are also on or off (water present or not) - they cannot return a water level. My use case is detecting the actual level in the pit, monitoring the rate of rise or fall and tracking pump efficiency. The tags won't do that. I also want an alert driven non-mechanically when the water level rises above the level that the pump should have activated - so (at least if I'm home) I can act on it expeditiously. Michael.
Steve811 Posted June 7, 2019 Posted June 7, 2019 Did you find a programming solution to this? I'm trying to do the exact same thing.
jec6613 Posted December 26, 2019 Posted December 26, 2019 I have an Aeotec dual probe sensor. It's submersible, has two level senses, and runs on USB power with battery backup. One is about 1" above the normal activation level, the other is near the top of the pit, so I get a warning and then a "DO SOMETHING NOW!!!" Just zip tied them in place.
smacbride Posted December 30, 2019 Posted December 30, 2019 On 12/26/2019 at 4:42 AM, jec6613 said: I have an Aeotec dual probe sensor. It's submersible, has two level senses, and runs on USB power with battery backup. One is about 1" above the normal activation level, the other is near the top of the pit, so I get a warning and then a "DO SOMETHING NOW!!!" Just zip tied them in place. Yep, I just added the same sensor to my sump pump setup. Works like a champ.
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