New to PLEG, new to serious use of Vera, hoping for some help

Hi everyone,

While I have had my Vera 3 unit for a couple years, I have only ever used it in conjunction with Mysensors gear until recently and have always only used basic scenes. When I bought the Vera 3 unit I also bought an Aeotec Micro Double Switch which has energy monitoring but I haven’t used it until now. I have connected the outputs; one to my washing machine and the other to my dryer, and I would like to create a scene where a virtual switch is turned on when the wattage for each independent device goes about 5 watt and to turn those virtual switches off when the wattage drops below 5 watt for 5 or so minutes.

I am struggling to set up PLEG. The first issue is that I am concerned that this Z-wave device can even do what I want it to do. I bought it after much research and found that it would indeed work in this situation, but I am now doubtful. Thanks to some other posts here I worked out that I need to choose LOGIC INPUTS then DEVICE PROPERTIES. When I select the actual device (not the individual washing machine and dryer outputs of the switch) I have quite a choice of selections including watts, but when I choose the actual individual output I have very little to choose. The choices here are: Manufacturer Info and Capabilities under ZWAVEDEVICE1, Status and Target under SWITCHPOWER1, and Modesetting Autoconfigure and Last Update under HADEVICE1.

So it looks to me that the only option I have is to monitor the actual Z-wave device, rather than the two individual outputs. Do others come to the same conclusion? Or am I missing something here?

I will add that maybe I haven’t configured the Z-wave device, as I lost the instructions years ago.

Keen to hear what others think!
Thanks!

I think you will find that the metering is for the entire devcie not for the individual outputs in which case you will need 2 of these devices.
In any case a dryer will consume a s***load of power, probably more than the Aeotec can handle without blowing up, this would especially be the case with a double controller.
My advice is to use two seperate applliance controllers with metering (ie not light controllers), then worry about how to program it.

Thanks for your reply.

It does appear that the energy monitoring covers the whole device and not individual devices separately. What I’ve done is create a scene to tell me when the laundry is done rather than be specific.

I’ve checked the power requirements for both my washing machine and dryer, and they are lower than what the switch can handle. But thanks for your concern!