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Monitor Water

Domoticaworld.com Posted on by

Goal

  • MONITOR water consumption. Knowing how much water you use and when you use it. Awareness will lower the water usage.
    Thanks to Jaybe I found that my current water meter does have an output for pulse counting.

How to measure?

Water meter has an output that can be read by a ‘reed-relay‘. Every .5 Liter of water a magnet switches a small loop. This loop (reed-relay) is connected to an RFX (Pulse) Meter. This sends out the information to HomeSeer.

image_watermeter
  • Open your RFXMeter and insert the RFXPulse module
  • Connect reed-relay to Open ended cable
  • Connect this cable to the RFXPulse module
  • Fine tune the position of the reed relay to make sure it sends out a pulse
  • Configure HomeSeer RFXCOM plugin for new pulse module

Hardware

  • €32 RFXPulse with  Open End cable (code 10502)
    (thank you for the updated information Raymond!)
  • € 14 Reed-contact (Conrad) (or use the reed relay from a KAKU doorsensor, which is good for nothing except a reed relay ;-)
    NOTE: you need an RFXMeter to use the RFXPulse module!

Measure shower water

To measure shower water usage you need to identify when to:

  • start measuring – when somebody steps on the scale
  • stop measuring – 15 minutes after start

As I happen to have an Oregon weight scale that allowed me to identify the user

So if I step on the scale, my weight device in HomeSeer updates. Now a homeseer script records the water usage, waits 15 minutes and checks the water usage again. It puts the difference in my water usage device. (there is 2 scripts like this, one for me and one for my wife).

Z66 – virtual shower water usage device
^8 – virtual daily water (could also be total water I guess)

&hs.setdevicestring "Z66", (hs.devicevalue ("^8")/2) & " L"
&hs.setdevicevalue "Z66", (hs.devicevalue ("^8")/2)
&hs.writelog "Shower", "Water BEFORE shower: " & (hs.devicevalue ("^8")/2) & "L"

Wait: 15 minutes and then

&hs.writelog "Shower", "Water AFTER shower: " & (hs.devicevalue ("^8")/2) & "L"
&hs.writelog "Shower", "Difference: " & (hs.devicevalue ("^8")/2)-hs.devicevalue ("Z66") & "L"
&hs.setdevicestring "Z66", (hs.devicevalue ("^8")/2)-hs.devicevalue ("Z66") & " L"
&hs.setdevicevalue "Z66", (hs.devicevalue ("^8")/2)-hs.devicevalue ("Z66")

 

NOTE: Set the “Cannot retrigger for” to 900 seconds (15 minutes). Otherwise you could step on the scale twice in a row and get messed up data.
Caveat: it will count ALL water used during this 15 minute period
Caveat: it works because we step on the scale before taking a shower (which is not a bad habit anyway)
Note: if it works you can remove green ‘writelog’ lines

Comments

Monitor Water — 6 Comments

  1. Dear DJ,

    Very cool what you are doing! For me its still hocus pocus so i want to start small with EnyMate to monitor gas/elektricity/water. Im wondering what do you think of Enymate.
    Or do you say: “why not using RFX sensors?”

    Kind regards,
    Raymond

    • It all depends on your goal. If you want everything to be completely integrated into Homeseer, then RFXCOM might be the better choice. I say “might” because I don’t know the Enymate solution. Have to admit that this solution looks pretty cool, especially with the pricing they offer.

      So to get the information and charts Enymate would probably do. If you want to use this information inside Homeseer RFXCOM might be the way to go, unless you can find a way to (automatically?) import this data into homeseer. Note that this will cost you euro >400 for the RFXCOM LAN with some receivers, RFXPower, RFXPulse, RFXMeter, etc.

  2. Comment the sensors with code 70090+ 70092 dont exists, which should you use?
    Should it be code 10502?

    • Well spotted! The RFXPulse module + Open-end cable have now been combined into a single partnumber: 10502. Thank you!

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