HomeKit Smart Plug to Trigger Home Automations

[rayward]

I want to use my TV being turned on as a trigger to set a scene. The way I figure this can work is have the TV plugged into a smart plug such that, when the TV starts to draw more than standby power, it flags the change to HomeKit so that I can use it to trigger a scene. Is this possible?

For background, I have Aqara, Lutron and Phillips Hue hubs, but I cannot see where their respective smart plugs can be used as triggers.

TIA

 

[fwmireault]

You can use a smart plug to trigger an automation, but I don't think you can do it by monitoring the power consumption itself, at least not from the Home app. AFAIK, you can trigger an automation only when the smart plug turns either on or off. But this is not useful for what you're trying to accomplish.

If you have a Homekit TV, the TV will show up in the Home app as an accessory, and you can use it as a trigger for automations. I have one, and it works just fine. If you don't have a Homekit TV, I don't think you can set up such an automation in the Home app. But you might be able to do it with a third-party app or the Shortcut app, idk.

 

[rayward]

SOLUTION

It takes a bit of wrangling, but it's doable. Controller for HomeKit can see the power usage data from a smart plug with such capability, so I am using that to monitor the power usage by my TV to trigger a dummy switch on or off based on the consumption.

Here's the workflow:

1. Set up smart plug (I am using a Shelly Plug Plus US) to monitor the power consumption of the TV
2. Expose the smart plug to HomeKit via HomeBridge and add as accessory in Home app
3. Create dummy switch in HomeBridge to act as an on/off flag for the TV
4. Create scenes in Controller for HomeKit to toggle the dummy switch based on the power usage data from the smart plug
5. Use a change in the status of the dummy switch ("When an accessory is controlled") to trigger automations in Home app

So now, I can trigger whatever scenes and automations I want based on the TV being turned on or off, even if I simply hit the power button.