Better Laundry Monitor Port & Update


I have both the washer and dryer (gas heated) on the same zooz, and had to adjust the startup power to be above what the control panels and lights draw when both on, but 805,000 Watts is obviously a bad reading. Only happened about 3 times this week. otherwise I the monitor works great. Adding another zooz for the dishwasher now.


I'm sorry I misread I didn't see you had a 'bad' reading causing it. That would be unfixable obviously without the repeat action, I can try to get some time and add it for you so you can have it require twice/three times whatever to filter out those spikes.


I just found the latestpower variable and the comment about it being less than 1000 to avoid false spike triggers. I changed the value to 1800 and compared that in the start if logic.

I have 2 zooz Zen15s and they both randomly report the huge power use for one or two reports- I know my dishwasher or laundry is not drawing over 2,000 amps :crazy_face:


That is interesting, I have a handful of the Zen15's and haven't noticed any false starts. I'll have to watch a little more closely. Here is what I have set up:


I think the false stats are mainly with the first gen (straight connector) ZEN15s ... I have four of them and they all give me something like 10 million watts (or amps or voltage) or so for max readings sometimes :face_with_raised_eyebrow: ... likely a firmware problem with the first gens.


I just purchased the Zen15s in the past week or 2. I'm only a couple month into home automation. I have the angled plug. Both units have given a few high power readings, but I added the start filter into the driver code to ignore any power report over 1800 watts as a start trigger. I am wondering if the bad reports my be due to a power surge (we are rural - have to use cell radio as internet connection). I also have a couple of 900 Mhz ethenet radio links - so they share/are close to the zwave frequencies. I was surprised zwave even works for me with the 900Mhz radio links in the same house.

The driver code change I made seems to have eliminated the false starts.


I don’t think so. While I love these plugs, they have always had the infrequent erroneous events. I just have to make sure that any automation that triggers on power has a limiting condition.(power<1800)


Are you still using your port of @krlaframboise ST handler? IIRC, he included a filter that would keep crazy reports from creating events. I don’t think the native driver has that.


Nope, I switched to the built in driver as soon as it came out, I do have all not first gen ones so maybe I got lucky :slight_smile:


An issue: I use a Zooz ZEN15 to monitor power. My dryer, when it shuts off drops to 0 power. Once it's at 0 the ZEN15 stops reporting power.

So my usage reporting thresholds is 0 in the child UI.

However the 0 appears to be ignored. There is a default at line 103 in the child app code:

delayEnd = delayEnd ?: 2

That default appears to be overriding the 0 set in the UI. If I change the default to 0 in the code, the app works as intended.


The "Elvis operator" in Groovy (?: ) tests null and zero. Groovy-false'ish.

You can replace that with an explicit check for null, allowing zero to NOT be replaced by the default.

if (delayEnd = null) delayEnd = 2


Would it be possible to add the notifications to use the new Hubitat app? I noticed on some of the built in apps have a "Text Alert" that will display those devices. It seems like it should be a simple add, if only I knew what to add


The virtual power monitor driver got my attention. I don't have a way to monitor the power on a 220V dryer, but I did put a Samsung multipurpose sensor on the door, it can sense the vibration and door open/close, but implementation to monitor the dryer is the challenge. I was wondering if a virtual "outlet" or power monitor would be possible that would register power usage after an adjustable amount of time from the acceleration attribute of the Samsung sensor. This would help eliminate false alarms (opening and closing door, removing clothes, etc) and only report if the door was shut. This might be a nice solution for those of us with electric dryers.

I have been trying to make this work in RM4, but I can't figure out how to account for delays with the reporting of the acceleration, so I was hoping that a virtual power monitor driver with some adjustable parameters would make this easier.


Do you all have indicator lights on the front of your machines? Like Rinse and Cycle Finished and so on?
Then you might take a look at this device. I have one coming today to tell the wife when the rinse is starting so she can add stuff to the washer.


I have LED's on the washer, but the dryer is all mechanical. I guess they din't feel any other indication that the dial was needed! I have a outlet connected to the washer, and it monitors power, so that side is covered. I think that is a great idea, monitor the lights and you then know if / when you have time to add things.

The dryer side is the challenge. If there was a driver that could use the acceleration sensor and make it act as a power meter, with a parameter to set time of vibration before reporting (to eliminate false notifications), then I could use RM, Better Laundry monitor, or others, but I am in no way a good enough coder to do this, however, the Google searching has already begun....


I have ordered one of these for my 220V dryer.
It has a WiFi hub and talks to Alexa. I'll have to see if I can get the Alexa notification to flip a virtual switch in Hubitat.
People have requested a driver for SmartThings - i am hoping that happens.


I wish that Homeseer stuff was Zigbee so it could be used in other countries !


I don't have a SmartThings MultiPurpose Sensor to experiment with, but a "hybrid" driver could be created with:

capability "TemperatureMeasurement"
capability "Battery"
capability "ContactSensor"
capability "Configuration"
capability "ThreeAxis"
capability "AccelerationSensor"
capability "Refresh"
capability "Sensor"

capability "Power Meter"

Where the Power Meter capability gets added and then for each acceleration or threeAxis event received increments the power attribute... maybe by 5 or 10.. after 20 seconds of vibration it would show say 200 watts. As soon as acceleration went to zero, the power attribute would be set to zero too.

As I said, I don't have one to test with and I can't speak to how often it sends an acceleration or threeAxis event. Don't even know which event would be "ideal" to monitor.

"Hybrid" drivers (as I call them) are tricky when they have to 100% emulate the real driver it's replacing first and foremost. Therefore since we can't start with Hubitat's built in driver and only add the Power Meter capability, finding a functional SmartThings DTH (or already converted) would be the starting point, I guess.


I modified @ChrisUthe’s app to accommodate an acceleration sensor for my dryer since I had the same 240v challenge. I use an Iris smart plug for my washer with this app and have a second child app using acceleration for my dryer. Happy to share if interested. It’s been working well for the past few months. Been meaning to submit a pull request for @ChrisUthe to consider.


I would definitely check that out! Thanks!