Getting started

This takes about ten minutes for the first appliance, and a couple of minutes for each one after that.

What you need

  • Indigo 2022.1 or later.
  • A plug or meter for each appliance that Indigo can already read, and that reports the appliance’s power in watts. I use Shelly plugs running under my Shelly Direct plugin, and the plugin’s starting settings suit those, but any Indigo device with a watts reading will do.
  • For phone alerts, the Pushover plugin installed and set up in Indigo, with a Pushover account.
  • For email alerts, the Email+ plugin set up in Indigo with a mail server to send through.

You can use Pushover, email, both, or neither — the plugin still records every cycle and runs your triggers without them.

1. Install the plugin

  1. Go to the Releases page and download ApplianceMonitor.indigoPlugin.zip
  2. Unzip the downloaded file — you will get ApplianceMonitor.indigoPlugin
  3. Double-click ApplianceMonitor.indigoPlugin — Indigo will install it automatically

Indigo asks whether to enable the plugin. Say yes.

There is nothing to set in Plugins → Appliance Monitor → Configure apart from a debug switch, because every setting belongs to an appliance.

2. Add an appliance

  1. In Indigo, choose New Device.
  2. Set Type to Appliance Monitor and the model to Appliance Monitor.
  3. In Power meter device, pick the plug or meter the appliance is plugged into.
  4. Check Power state name. It starts as powerWatts, which is what Shelly Direct calls its watts reading. If your meter calls it something else, type that name in. If you get it wrong, Indigo will not save the settings and tells you the names the meter does have, the first twelve in alphabetical order, so you can pick the right one.
  5. Check Energy state name the same way. It starts as energyKwhToday. If your meter has no energy count in kWh — kilowatt hours, the units on your electricity bill — clear the box, and the plugin records each cycle without its energy use.
  6. Leave the thresholds and delays as they are to start with. They suit a washing machine.
  7. Tick the alerts you want under the Pushover and email headings. Notify on door ready and Notify on socket reminder are ticked to start with.
  8. Click Save.

Every setting is explained on the Settings page.

3. Check it works

The new appliance appears in Indigo’s device list showing idle, and its Current Watts follows the meter within 20 seconds. The Event Log has a line saying the plugin is watching the appliance.

To check your alerts without waiting for a real wash, add an action of type Send Test Notification for the appliance and run it, as the Actions and triggers page explains. The Event Log says how many people each alert reached.

Then run the appliance. Within about 40 seconds of it starting, the device shows running and the Event Log says the cycle has started. When the cycle ends, the log gives its length, highest power draw and energy used, and your door-ready alert follows.

Tuning it for your appliance

The starting settings came from our washing machine, whose 58-minute cycle peaks at about 2,000 watts and never drops below 3.8 watts while it is running:

Setting Starting value
Run threshold 5 watts
Idle threshold 2 watts
End-of-cycle debounce 3 minutes
Door-ready delay 2 minutes
Socket-reminder delay 30 minutes

For another appliance, watch its meter’s watts reading through a whole cycle and note two things: the lowest reading while it is running, and the reading once it has stopped. Set Idle threshold a little above the stopped reading, and Run threshold below the lowest running reading. If the appliance rests for a while in the middle of its cycle — some pause between rinse and spin — make End-of-cycle debounce longer than that rest. Ticking Verbose debug logging in Plugins → Appliance Monitor → Configure puts every reading in the Event Log while you do this.

If the plugin ever reports a cycle that never happened, such as a few seconds of standby power, the Settings page shows how to make it ignore short or weak cycles.