this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025

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194

Got myself some energy monitoring Zigbee plugs and made an interesting discovery (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 22 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm in the process of getting my Home Assistant environment up and running, and decided to run a test: it turns out that my gaming PC (custom 5800X3D/7900XTX build) uses more power just sitting idle, than both of my storage freezers combined.

Background: In addition to some other things, I bought two "Eightree" brand Zigbee-compatible plugs to see how they fare. One is monitoring the power usage of both freezers on a power strip (don't worry, it's a heavy duty strip meant for this), and the other is measuring the usage of my entire desktop setup (including monitors and the HA server itself, a Lenovo M710q).

After monitoring these for a couple days, I decided that I will shut off my PC unless I'm actively using it. It's not a server, but it does have WOL capability, so if I absolutely need to get into it remotely, it won't be an issue.

Pretty fascinating stuff, and now my wife is completely on board as well; she wants to put a plug on her iMac to see what it draws, as she uses it to hold her cross-stitch files and other things.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Do you have a link to the plugs? I want to try the same

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

I love my old desktops that pull almost nothing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

If you want to expand from just monitoring a couple sockets to monitoring the whole house; I'd recommend Iotawatt. I've been using one of these to monitor every circuit in my house for a few years now.

You can use the built in webpages shown below to view it's internal graphs, or setup an exporter to feed the data into external DBs like influxDB+Graphana or Emoncms.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Very cool! However, my house is a rental, so any monitoring equipment has to be somewhat non-invasive.

Edit: it helps if I actually look at the product before spouting nonsense... Looks promising.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

I'm in a rental too. It's non-invasive; just gotta pop the panel cover off, clip the transformers over the wires without disconnecting them, and put the cover back. It can all be removed just as easily.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 22 hours ago (5 children)

monitors

Don't underestimate the power draw of multiple monitors.

But while you're at it: simply turn off different devices on the same power strip and check what actually draws how much.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Does it clock down when idle?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago (5 children)

How is it possible that it draws 100W at idle? What is it even doing?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago (5 children)

I had a similar revelation. Home assistant has a WOL component, so you can set that up for easy starts. I've had mixed success with mechanisms to get HA to sleep the computer, though.

Ideally I want the machine to be sleeping I'd I'm not using it.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

It will help some, and will also help temps, but AMD hardware does well with undervolting, especially the 5800X3D. I undervolt mine, and read the consensus that - 30 across all cores should be achievable for anyone, unless they're really, really unlucky. My 6800 XT I also only run @ 92% Voltage, and it runs cooler and faster now, too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Definitely gonna check that out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago

The CPU was done in BIOS on an ASUS x570. For me it was under AI Tweaker > Precision Boost Override > Curve Optimizer.

The GPU was done in the driver software on Windows. Or LACT if on Linux.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I bought two “Eightree” brand Zigbee-compatible plugs to see how they fare.

Did you need a Zigbee hub to get them working? I was gifted an Eighttree Zigbee plug with energy monitoring, but it seems to require using a hardware hub :(

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Yeah, anything Zigbee needs a hub of some sort that interfaces with the server. Zigbee is a mesh-like network of its own - it doesn't use wifi or Bluetooth or anything.

I bought Nabu Casa's Connect ZBT-1 dongle; it's like $35 and plugs directly into the HA server. Super simple to configure as well, since HAOS detects it automatically. Plus, the smart plugs act as routers, so as long as there is a path of router-enabled devices that can see each other all the way to the dongle on the server, you shouldn't need anything else.

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