So, I bought a CBI Astute on the weekend, I had some sparky's round doing some work and asked them to connect the astute to the geyser. So I'm not sure if I have misunderstood things, or I need to call said sparky's back. 

We have a change over switch for the generator (Yay! no more suicide plugs), the astute was off via the app, so I assumed then that even though the breaker switch for the geyser was up/on, because the astute was off - the geyser would be off and not try and pull power from the geyser? The poor gennie nearly died - I don't know how it was still running it's a 2.2 and the geyser is 2kw and most of the house was still on but I digress. 

But is this expected behavior and I'm confused about how the CBI Astute works or is this a 'bug' and the sparky needs to come back and fix it? 

The live wire from the circuit breaker goes into the Astute and the outlet to the geyser. The astute is therefore basically a circuit breaker. If it is off, no power is supposed to go to the geyser. If you switch it on and off, you can clearly hear the switching that takes place inside the Astute. 

1 hour ago, Don said:

The live wire from the circuit breaker goes into the Astute and the outlet to the geyser. The astute is therefore basically a circuit breaker. If it is off, no power is supposed to go to the geyser. If you switch it on and off, you can clearly hear the switching that takes place inside the Astute. 

Yes I can hear the relay switch. 

I think there is a setting for the astute for default state after power loss. Perhaps the power loss during switchover triggered that.

2 hours ago, Don said:

The live wire from the circuit breaker goes into the Astute and the outlet to the geyser. The astute is therefore basically a circuit breaker. If it is off, no power is supposed to go to the geyser. If you switch it on and off, you can clearly hear the switching that takes place inside the Astute. 

That was how the sparky explained it to me.
I hear the relay switch. 
When it's off the GeyserWise monitor is off however like I said, I'm sure the geyser was still on. Maybe I need to do further testing. 

 

28 minutes ago, P1000 said:

I think there is a setting for the astute for default state after power loss. Perhaps the power loss during switchover triggered that.

I have to default off.

 

But maybe I'm mistaken... I'll do more testing.

7 hours ago, MKRandburg said:

So, I bought a CBI Astute on the weekend, I had some sparky's round doing some work and asked them to connect the astute to the geyser. So I'm not sure if I have misunderstood things, or I need to call said sparky's back. 

We have a change over switch for the generator (Yay! no more suicide plugs), the astute was off via the app, so I assumed then that even though the breaker switch for the geyser was up/on, because the astute was off - the geyser would be off and not try and pull power from the geyser? The poor gennie nearly died - I don't know how it was still running it's a 2.2 and the geyser is 2kw and most of the house was still on but I digress. 

But is this expected behavior and I'm confused about how the CBI Astute works or is this a 'bug' and the sparky needs to come back and fix it? 

Just another thing. Do you use the E-welink APP?

Did you confirm the on/off status on the CBI or on the APP?

Edited September 14, 20223 yr by Scorp007

I can only use the CBI APP

Open the CBI App tap on electric and you can see what amps and power is being used. 

 

 

 

7 hours ago, Don said:

The live wire from the circuit breaker goes into the Astute and the outlet to the geyser. The astute is therefore basically a circuit breaker. If it is off, no power is supposed to go to the geyser. If you switch it on and off, you can clearly hear the switching that takes place inside the Astute. 

Yes I can hear the relay switch. 

32 minutes ago, Chris Louw said:

I can only use the CBI APP

Open the CBI App tap on electric and you can see what amps and power is being used. 

 

 

 

Yes I can hear the relay switch. 

Chris someone pointed out that they got it to work on the EWelink but he held the pair button in for much longer than 5sec. The manual I found for the Astute is very basic. Some other smart switches also work with the EWelink. On the EWelink the power on status can be set to ON or OFF or Resume.

What I have found is on the 3 last software upgrades at time the Sonoff has been de-energised for even an hour and it will not go to grey to mean not energised. Even the ON or OFF state will not change. The power display can also show what it was when last switched on. Very bad if one got used to power updates within 5 sec.

It updates better by closing and opening the APP but it does not always work to refresh.

Another point is one should hear the click from relay on changing to OFF or ON so again one would not know which direction it changed state hearing a click.

@Scorp007 @Chris Louw  There are two main platforms for IOT plugs/lights/switches etc - Sonoff & Tuya

Sonoff devices (and compatibles) run on the EWElink app

Tuya devices run on a variety of Apps - Smart Life, Tuya Smart etc

• They all do basically the same thing 
• Tuya OEM there products to manufacturers e.g. CBI as well as the APP (CBI App) 
• Most lightbulbs are Tuya based

You can use any of the TUYA compatible apps with the CBI switches

As far as I am aware it is not possible to run the CBI switches on the Sonoff/Ewelink app without hardware changes to the switches. 

Some of the switches can be reflashed with Tasmota/ESPhome which enables you to cut out the cloud altogether and run everything locally. 

Wifi is the most common communications protocol for switches in SA. There is however also the Zigbee & ZWave wireless protocols available. Zigbee being more commonly available in SA, main advantage being longer ranges than Wifi and lower power consumption. You generally need to get a Zigbee bridge type device or USB adapter for your home assistant box to be able to control Zigbee devices.

3 minutes ago, Sc00bs said:

@Scorp007 @Chris Louw  There are two main platforms for IOT plugs/lights/switches etc - Sonoff & Tuya

Sonoff devices (and compatibles) run on the EWElink app

Tuya devices run on a variety of Apps - Smart Life, Tuya Smart etc

• They all do basically the same thing 
• Tuya OEM there products to manufacturers e.g. CBI as well as the APP (CBI App) 
• Most lightbulbs are Tuya based

You can use any of the TUYA compatible apps with the CBI switches

As far as I am aware it is not possible to run the CBI switches on the Sonoff/Ewelink app without hardware changes to the switches. 

 

That is correct I use Tuya and Sonoff and could not get CBI to pair with them. I then used CBI to pair the CBI Astute. 

@Scorp007 CBI does have all the info on their website. If the Astute is "On" the red/blue led on the Astute is flashing. If the relay is "OFF" the red/blue led is on but not flashing. I do find the CBI App beter than ewelink. 

I may be miss understanding but since you now have a Genny in a changeover system then the genny acts like the grid basically so if the geyser is on it will pull from the generator, most people have a switching protocol of switch off geysers and stove then do changeover and go start Genny.

So the CBI will work when the genny is on as it is getting power as per normal and does not know that the generator is now running it and not the grid.

Once again I may have misunderstood the original question but that's my 2c worth

@Chris LouwThere are integrations for Tuya and Sonoff into Home Assistant. You can then use one interface for you all your switches, no matter which platform they are on and create integrations using data from all of them, 

3 hours ago, Chris Louw said:

@Scorp007 CBI does have all the info on their website. If the Astute is "On" the red/blue led on the Astute is flashing. If the relay is "OFF" the red/blue led is on but not flashing. I do find the CBI App beter than ewelink. 

Thanks Chris. I was hoping to see the various options. One option important to me was the on power can you set it to be ON or OFF or RESUME as users indicated the Astute has no such function. 

29 minutes ago, Scorp007 said:

I was hoping to see the various options.

Hi Scorp007, the app has many functions. You can switch the power On or Off manually on various screens. Once you open the app on your phone, you will see the devices that you have setup. I have 2 Geysers and therefore 2 Astute units to control the Geysers. This is the Home Screen. If the Power Icon on the right next to the Geyser is Grey, that means the power to the geyser is OFF. If the power to one of the geysers are On, the colour of the Power button Icon changes to green. On this screen Geyser 1 = OFF and Geyser 2 = On. By tapping on the Power Icon, you can switch the geyser power On or Off manually.

 

 

Once you tap on a Specific Geyser on the Home Screen, it will take you to that specific geyser. The switch Icon is White. That means the geyser is OFF. 

If you tap on the Switch Power Icon, you manually switch the Geyser ON. The Switch Power Icon changes to a Cayan colour and a Red Dot on the i of CBi.  

I do not know how to arrange the images next to each other. This post is becoming too long. I will post this and continue...... with a new post.

If you tap on the Electric Icon at the bottom, you will see the power usage details. The Big dial shows power usage (kWh) for the day. It displays Current (A), Power (W), Voltage (V) and Total (KWh). At the bottom it will display the usage per month. When the Power is Off, the Current and Power will be 0.000 and 0. 

 

If the Power is on, the Current and Power will be displayed. See below. 12.319(A) and 2727.3(W). Obviously if the Geyser thermostat switches off when the Geyser reaches temperature, the Current and Power readings will be 0, even if the power is switched on by the Astute. 

If you tap on a specific month, it will display a graph of the daily kW-h usage per day. The blue graph is for the current day. The grey for previous days. You can scroll left or right to see other days. 

If go go back to the Geyser Home Screen and tap on Timer Icon at the bottom, you will be taken to the Schedule screen. Here you setup your Schedule you, i.e. when the Geyser should switch On and when to switch Off. Green is active schedules. The grey schedules are inactive. 

To be continued on the following post.....

Edited September 14, 20223 yr by Don

When you select to setup a schedule or edit a schedule, you will be able to select a time, hour and minute. Then you tap on the Switch Icon to select whether to switch the Geyser On or Off. In order to switch a Geyser On and Off, you need to setup at least 2 schedules. One for On and one for Off. You can add as many schedules as you want. You can also get a notification on your phone every time the Geyser switches On or Off if you want. 

 

The schedule will only be executed once. If you want to repeat the schedule every day, tap on repeat, to select the days of the week the schedule should be repeated. If you want to disable a schedule for a specific day, just deselect it. 

With the schedule setup, everything runs automatically, unless you tap on one of the Power button Icons as explained above to change the status manually. 

Edited September 14, 20223 yr by Don

9 hours ago, Scorp007 said:

Thanks Chris. I was hoping to see the various options. One option important to me was the on power can you set it to be ON or OFF or RESUME as users indicated the Astute has no such function. 

When using the Smarthome App to control your CBI switch you it has is a resume setting where it will (not sure if it has it in the CBI app)

12 hours ago, Dylboy said:

I may be miss understanding but since you now have a Genny in a changeover system then the genny acts like the grid basically so if the geyser is on it will pull from the generator, most people have a switching protocol of switch off geysers and stove then do changeover and go start Genny.

So the CBI will work when the genny is on as it is getting power as per normal and does not know that the generator is now running it and not the grid.

Once again I may have misunderstood the original question but that's my 2c worth

 

I want to control the geyser from the CBI - I don't want to have to flip the geyser switch on the DB - my thinking was - set the app to not auto restart the CBI after outage. So after the power goes down, the CBI will be off, no wifi and no power. Flip the changeover to gennie, wifi comes back on but CBI remains off, therefore no geyser because the CBI is off. 

11 minutes ago, Sc00bs said:

When using the Smarthome App to control your CBI switch you it has is a resume setting where it will (not sure if it has it in the CBI app)

It's a setting on the black screen - far right - you can set it to On/Off or Remember status. Mine is on Off

Edited September 15, 20223 yr by MKRandburg

16 minutes ago, MKRandburg said:

So after the power goes down, the CBI will be off, no wifi and no power. Flip the changeover to gennie, wifi comes back on but CBI remains off, therefore no geyser because the CBI is off. 

I am not sure what happens when power is lost to the CBI and the power comes back on. I have an inverter, so the power never goes off. A person need to take into account that if the Eskom goes down and you are running on batteries, the Geyser Schedule will be running and might switch on the Geyser during that time. My Geysers are on the inverter side (essential) and not on the non-essential side where the power will be down during an outage, as I only heat up my Geysers with solar power.  

Edited September 15, 20223 yr by Don

16 hours ago, Scorp007 said:

Just another thing. Do you use the E-welink APP?

Did you confirm the on/off status on the CBI or on the APP?

Loadshedding is at 12 - I'm going to set the geyser to be on at that time (11:45). CBI app -> Device Restart Status -> Off, I will open the CBI app before I flip the gennie change over switch and let you all know what happens. 
 

2 minutes ago, Don said:

I am not sure what happens when power is lost to the CBI and the power comes back on. I have an inverter, so the power never goes off. A person need to take into account that if the Eskom goes down and you are running on batteries, the Geyser Schedule will be running and might switch on the Geyser during that time. 

My plan when I get my inverter is to set up home assistant and then let that control that the geyser should be off during that time. I'm not sure how yet but I'm sure it can be done. I'm a software developer, almost anything can be done, if you think hard enough about the problem.

22 minutes ago, MKRandburg said:

My plan when I get my inverter is to set up home assistant and then let that control that the geyser should be off during that time. I'm not sure how yet but I'm sure it can be done. I'm a software developer, almost anything can be done, if you think hard enough about the problem.

@MKRandburg What inverter do you have? 

If you have a Sunsynk is pretty easy to connect to home assistant and then you can use your inverter data to decide on whether to switch geysers on etc. 

Node Red is pretty easy to use but the automations in HA have recently become a lot easier to use so you could probably do it there as well. 

11 minutes ago, Sc00bs said:

@MKRandburg What inverter do you have? 

If you have a Sunsynk is pretty easy to connect to home assistant and then you can use your inverter data to decide on whether to switch geysers on etc. 

Node Red is pretty easy to use but the automations in HA have recently become a lot easier to use so you could probably do it there as well. 

I'm probably going to go with a Kodak OSG5.6 because I want to start my Solar journey batteryless. Not sure how well it will do this. I wonder if that should guide my decision... hmmm.