This small project shows how to configure multiple smart sockets running Tasmota firmware for dust collection in a workshop.
Source Code Repository
https://github.com/treitmayr/workshop-dust-collector
Goal
The physical setup assumes the following devices:
- Dust collector with a dedicated smart socket
- One or more machines, each with its own dedicated smart socket (please observe that your machines do not exceed the maximum power rating of the smart socket!)
The goal is to turn on the dust collector when at least one of the machines consumes power. And it shall be turned off again when none of the machines is powered on.
Design
While there are various ways for creating this functionality (e.g. using MQTT and Node-Red) I wanted to go for the solution which requires the least additional infrastructure. So the solution was to directly send commands between the sockets using Tasmota rules.
Machine Sockets
The machine sockets only need to monitor their power readings and send out different triggers to the dust collector's socket depending on whether power has exceeded a certain limit OnWatts or dropped below a lower limit OffWatts.
Dust Collector Socket
This socket receives the notifications from the machines and keeps track of the number of running machines using a simple counter in Var1. If this counter if positive, the dust collector shall turn on, but if it reaches 0 again, this indicates that all machines are turned off and the dust collector shall power off.
Note that in order to reset the counter if it went out of sync, the user can manually turn off socket power which also resets the counter to 0.