smartplug-energy-controller 0.0.2

Turning Tapo smartplug on/off depending on current electricity consumption

smartplug-energy-controller

A microservice to turn a smartplug on/off depending on current electricity consumption. The intention of this service is to use all energy you produced, e.g with a balcony power plant, by e.g. loading a portable battery. This can be achieved by plug in your battery into a smartplug. The smartplug is turned on/off dynamically, depending on your current electricity consumption.

The service provides the post method add_watt_consumption with the value to be provided as a raw data string.

Installation

The python package can be installed from PyPi (https://pypi.org/project/smartplug-energy-controller/)

1. Navigate to the folder where the virtual environment shall be created (e.g. your home dir):

cd ~

2. Create virtual environment (this will create a new folder smart_meter_py_env):

python3 -m venv smart_meter_py_env

3. Activate the virtual environment

source smart_meter_py_env/bin/activate

4. Upgrade pip and setuptools

python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools

5. Install smartplug-energy-controller

pip install smartplug-energy-controller

6. Provide environment variables. You can e.g. pass a .env file to smartplug-energy-controller via the option --dotenv_path. Or provide them by any other means (e.g. in your ~/.profile).

TAPO_PLUG_IP='192.168.x.x'
TAPO_CONTROL_USER='your_user'
TAPO_CONTROL_PASSWD='your_passwd'

Autostart after reboot and on failure

Create a systemd service by opening the file /etc/systemd/system/smartplug_energy_controller.service and copy paste the following contents. Replace User/Group/ExecStart accordingly.

[Unit]
Description=smartplug_energy_controller
Documentation=https://github.com/die-bauerei/smartplug-energy-controller
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ubuntu
Group=ubuntu
UMask=002
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash -lc "source /home/ubuntu/smart_meter_py_env/bin/activate && python /home/ubuntu/smart_meter_py_env/lib/python3.11/site-packages/smartplug-energy-controller/app.py --logfile /home/ubuntu/plug_controller.log -vv > /dev/null"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Now execute the following commands to enable autostart:

sudo systemctl --system daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable smartplug_energy_controller.service

It is now possible to start, stop, restart and check the status of smartplug-energy-controller with:

sudo systemctl start smartplug_energy_controller.service
sudo systemctl stop smartplug_energy_controller.service
sudo systemctl restart smartplug_energy_controller.service
sudo systemctl status smartplug_energy_controller.service

Usage in conjunction with openHAB

To use this service you need to get the consumption values from your smart-meter. There are of course lots of different ways to achieve this. A possible setup could include:

• Read data from your smart-meter and push them to openHAB:
  • https://github.com/die-bauerei/smart-meter-to-openhab
  • ...
• Let openHAB send the post request to this service.

Again, there are for sure many ways to do this. In case you are a python developer you may know https://github.com/spacemanspiff2007/HABApp. With HABApp you can accomplish this with a Rule like this:

class NumberItemStateChangedHttpForwarder(HABApp.Rule):
    def __init__(self, item_to_fwd : str, post_req_url : str) -> None:
        """
        Listen to a state changed event of a NumberItem and forward the value via a http post request
            Parameters:
                item_to_fwd (str): openHAB number item
                post_req_url (str): Full URL to send the post request to
        """
        super().__init__()
        self._url=post_req_url
        item=NumberItem.get_item(item_to_fwd)
        item.listen_event(self._item_state_changed, ItemStateChangedEventFilter())

    async def _item_state_changed(self, event):
        assert isinstance(event, ItemStateChangedEvent), type(event)
        try:
            async with self.async_http.post(self._url, data=str(event.value)) as response:
                if response.status != http.HTTPStatus.OK:
                    log.warning(f"Failed to forward value via post request to {self._url}. Return code: {response.status}. Text: {await response.text()}")
        except Exception as exc:
            log.error(f"Caught Exception: {exc}")