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    #31
    On the 27th at night I moved the temp sensor to the bottom drawer of the freezer. The swing is not as bad now. You can see in the chart below before the 28th the swing was more than after the 27th. What's weird though the bottom drawer doesn't appear to be getting as cold. Looks like it has not dropped below 2 degrees. I'll try a different spot in the bottom drawer to see if that makes a difference.

    Jim

    Click image for larger version  Name:	Capture.JPG Views:	0 Size:	24.6 KB ID:	1466177

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      #32
      As long as the readings don't jump around, accuracy of the absolute values is probably not that important - you can always program some offset value.
      I heard some people use glass bead vials. Interesting but may be overkill for the application. Some sort of heatsink? Or just sandwich the sensor between two steaks?

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        #33
        So I have the zooz installed and also installed the Jon00 DB charting to try to get a pattern and for the most part it likes to hover around 64-65 watts. The next step is to create an event and this is where I am having a little trouble. In the event of a power issue with the circuit, not the freezer itself, the zooz will obviously stop communicating with HS, so I am struggling trying to figure out how to create an event that would accurately reflect that. I was initially thinking of using something like "If the device for watts, has not changed in x amount of time, then..." , but I don't see that as an option.

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          #34
          Originally posted by Dweber85rc View Post
          So I have the zooz installed and also installed the Jon00 DB charting to try to get a pattern and for the most part it likes to hover around 64-65 watts. The next step is to create an event and this is where I am having a little trouble. In the event of a power issue with the circuit, not the freezer itself, the zooz will obviously stop communicating with HS, so I am struggling trying to figure out how to create an event that would accurately reflect that. I was initially thinking of using something like "If the device for watts, has not changed in x amount of time, then..." , but I don't see that as an option.
          If you have EasyTrigger then you would use a standard HS trigger and an EasyTrigger Condition.

          Your Trigger (IF) would be a recurring time trigger, so say 'The Event will automatically trigger every 5 minutes', or whatever is appropriate.
          Your Condition (AND IF) would be 'The Device's value has not changed for at least..'

          You would then need to set an Advanced Option 'Event cannot rerun for...' if you don't want it keep repeating at the Trigger frequency.

          Steve

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            #35
            Originally posted by Vit View Post
            As long as the readings don't jump around, accuracy of the absolute values is probably not that important - you can always program some offset value.
            I heard some people use glass bead vials. Interesting but may be overkill for the application. Some sort of heatsink? Or just sandwich the sensor between two steaks?
            This concept has to do with thermal mass, as in, a full freezer actually stays cold with more efficiency than an empty one. So by one simply keeping their freezer stocked well one is actually saving energy. So yeah, rather than use something artificial to take up space, just buy more good meats

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              #36
              Originally posted by SteveMSJ View Post

              If you have EasyTrigger then you would use a standard HS trigger and an EasyTrigger Condition.

              Your Trigger (IF) would be a recurring time trigger, so say 'The Event will automatically trigger every 5 minutes', or whatever is appropriate.
              Your Condition (AND IF) would be 'The Device's value has not changed for at least..'

              You would then need to set an Advanced Option 'Event cannot rerun for...' if you don't want it keep repeating at the Trigger frequency.

              Steve
              I have run into the condition multiple times where 'The Device's value has not changed for at least..' does not work for monitoring whether a device is being updated, especially for devices that can have stable values. Randy posted a script that actually checks the device update time (e.g. the device has not been set for at least x) that works better and can be run as an immediate script.

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                #37
                Originally posted by TC1 View Post

                This concept has to do with thermal mass, as in, a full freezer actually stays cold with more efficiency than an empty one. So by one simply keeping their freezer stocked well one is actually saving energy. So yeah, rather than use something artificial to take up space, just buy more good meats
                Well… Remembering that refrigeration devices remove heat, they don’t make cold. The thermal density of what is inside a freezer has nothing to do with its efficiency or energy use, only how much heat it can absorb before the temperature rises. Certainly a freezer full of ice will stay cold longer than an empty one in the absence of additional heat removal by the evaporator coils when it is running, but the efficiency of a freezer is due largely to the efficacy of its insulation and sealing and to a lesser extent the efficiency of its compressor. The newer inverter compressors gain some efficiency by their variable speed.

                For these reasons I monitor the air in the refrigerator and freezer compartments. The swing is natural as the compressor starts and stops and as I wrote above the swing is greater during a defrost cycle. Inverter compressor freezers have smaller operational swings since they are variable speed. I want to monitor whether the freezer is operating rather than a notice that a slab of meat is defrosting. If a slab of meat’s temperature rises by 10 degrees, it is likely the freezer has not been operating for quite a while whereas if the temperature of the air rises above norms I get a much earlier warning.

                HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

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                  #38
                  Originally posted by randy View Post
                  I want to monitor whether the freezer is operating rather than a notice that a slab of meat is defrosting. If a slab of meat’s temperature rises by 10 degrees, it is likely the freezer has not been operating for quite a while whereas if the temperature of the air rises above norms I get a much earlier warning.
                  I agree and take the same approach with monitoring my refrigerators and freezers.
                  -Wade

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                    #39
                    Originally posted by mterry63 View Post

                    I have run into the condition multiple times where 'The Device's value has not changed for at least..' does not work for monitoring whether a device is being updated, especially for devices that can have stable values. Randy posted a script that actually checks the device update time (e.g. the device has not been set for at least x) that works better and can be run as an immediate script.
                    Note that I was referring to the EasyTrigger condition here, not the HS native conditions which require you to choose a value that it has changed to. The Device Class only has one Last_Change property. Whether you check it through EasyTrigger or a script you will get the same Time. Whether it has been updated or not depends on various things including settings.

                    In the OP's particular case he was talking about checking the Watts device of a module to detect when the power to the module has been lost. The Watts to the freezer should be changing often and if the breaker trips the module will be effectively dead and the device will stop updating.

                    This is not the same as checking for freezer temperature fluctuations, which is another case also being discussed in this thread.

                    Steve

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                      #40
                      Understood Steve. I was referring to EasyTrigger as well. The difference is the EasyTrigger condition is checking the value and last change time, where as the script just checks the last change and ignores the value. In the long run, if you are only interested in a condition of "device updates stop occurring" the EasyTrigger condition will eventually bite you.

                      For an obvious example, I used the EasyTrigger condition to check if my light sensor device stopped updating, which worked great during the day. As soon as it got dark and the value went to "0" for 9 hours I started getting false alerts.

                      I realize this may not happen with power monitoring, but then again it may - eventually, randomly, and rarely. Just the kind of logic bug that is a pain to track down.

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                        #41
                        I am going to try this with easy trigger. I have set up an event where if the Watt's on the Zooz have not updated in 4 hours, send me a text. After charting the watt's usage in the Jon00DB Charting utility for a week and a half the watts fluctuate enough where I think this will be workable. This will also give me an opportunity now that I have the easy trigger plugin to adjust some other events I have that are quite lengthy and not super efficient.

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                          #42
                          One of my kids left our freezer door open for almost a day and all the meat (lots) thawed out. So I stuck a HomeSeer HS-FS100 Temperature Sensor & Buzzer. It's been in there for 2 days now and I created an event if the temp goes above freezing to send me an alert...So far so good...Click image for larger version  Name:	image0[3151].jpeg Views:	0 Size:	60.8 KB ID:	1477873

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