Smart socket..

Is there any wall smart socket that would work with app?
any from the link below?
https://www.screwfix.com/c/electrical-lighting/sockets/cat4540002?electricalsocketproducttype=plug&smartcompatibility=smart

Is it already possible to use excess PV with GE smart Plug?

Sebs only the GE plugs for now work with the app, and the excess solar function isn't there yet but is "coming soon"... whenever that might be

Sebs I've got one of those double switched sockets and am using the Broadlink integration in Home Assistant to control each outlet.

I've been using Node-RED for the last year to switch on sockets when the inverters are exporting (amongst other things) and have recently started using Home Assistant (because the integrations available are extensive and remote access is excellent) with Node-RED as an Add-on for the logic. Home Assistant is over the top for anyone who has no interest in home automation, but for anyone who does, it provides a simple and inexpensive way to get started.

Tim

I agree. I have a mix of Tasmota, GivEnergy plugs and Knightbridge double sockets. All have energy monitor function and all work in HA.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) I have a mix of Tasmota

Yup, I've found Tasmota rock-solid. There's an excellent UK vendor who supplies plugs pre-flashed for zero hassle. (coincidentally they have the same outer casing as the GE ones.)

Riscy Another vote for Tasmota. I have almost everything from immersion, to security lights, to Christmas lights display and even my heating & boiler thermostats run using Tasmota. I have absolutely no inclination to buy GE sockets. Way too closed a platform.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) I also now use Tasmota as my home automation configurable "go to". I was writing in C++ using the Arduino IDE but Tasmota just works with the same ESP8266 and ESP32 microcontrollers and other hardware. Poor @Sebs asked a simple question about smart sockets and we've hijacked his question with raves about Tasmota and HA.

Tim Automation is what I am looking for in the long run, initially and primarily dumping excess energy to, as example, AC. Someone can only have so many batteries before running out of the wall space and also what to do with it anyway. Additionally switching off certain sockets under set/low voltage, timed lights on/off, remote switching on/off.
My main problem is that i don't see the way to use excess energy, I do have Eddi but this is not that great and needs high excess to trigger and I did not found a way to let it talk to Viessmann boiler (IF i have excess you do not use gas kind of thing). If all this can be done with Home Assistant I would be for. It does seems "inexpensive" if it would be in stock. Simple? I would not call it that after reading a bit on their website.

Sebs I successfully tried to avoid Home Assistant for quite some time but caved in eventually when I heard some quite simple things such as:

• running it on a second-hand PC (Dell WYSE for about £35 on eBay) which is much simpler and cheaper than a Raspberry Pi (if you can get one) and

• all the integrations that work out of the box, including MQTT, GivTCP, Node-RED and Broadcom for the very reasonably priced Screwfix sockets.

I'm still using my old ESP8266 and ESP32 microcontrollers but with Tasmota over-the-air updates and I've bought some Athom swiches and relays which are similar to the Sonoff and Shelly ones, but with Tasmota pre-flashed. The only issue is that there is currently only one ethernet Tasmota micrcontroller, all the rest are wifi. Wifi is very convenient, but occasionally I need something a bit more robust, hence the ethernet-connected device.

With my automations and logic in Node-RED, I've been able to steer completely clear of YAML, relying on the integrations and entities being read/written from Node-RED directly.

Tim +1

• Home Assistant, with all its amazing out-the-box integrations.
• Tasmota (you can buy Wifi plugs from UK suppliers pre-flashed with Tasmota, don't need to faff about with ESP32 flashing if you don't want to.)
• Node-RED within HA for automations - don't bother with the HA Yaml automations.

RPi is fine for HA but you do need to use an external NVMe/SSD drive instead of relying on SD cards, because HA will nuke them approx every 3 months...

Another +1 for HA.
Although I find Riscy's comment about nuking the SD card every 3 months very strange.
All I can think is he is buying very cheap cards. I've been using the same card for about 2 years. I have just bought an SSD drive to switch over too as I've recently read several posts on the HA forum about SD cards EVENTUALLY failing.
My HA is running on a RPi 4 and I have a lot of things running on it including GivTCP which I think is a fantastic integration and highly recommend it.

Graham_Harrison Haha, I like your scepticism 😀 I went through several SanDisk and Samsung cards, 16GB and 32GB, that kind of size. To be fair:

1. I am writing a lot of data. Hundreds of sensors each minute into both the HA DB (MariaDB) but also into an unlimited-retention InfluxDB for long term reporting.
2. Mine's only a 2GB Pi4, which is a bit tight on RAM given it's running HA with Influx and a lot of hefty Node-RED, so it's always using the swapfile as well.
3. Often it was a corruption during an unexpected power outage or similar - is there a difference in how writeback caches work on SD cards vs an NVMe drive? I should go find out.

The other massive benefit of NVMe is the performance. Compared to the SD card interface it's a solid 10x gain. Complex HA dashboards used to take upwards of 5 seconds to render, where there was extensive disc access. On the NVMe drive they're instantaneous now.

Riscy If you're stressing your Pi that much I'd recommend you consider replacing it with a second hand Dell Wyse. I got mine from eBay for £33. It has an AMD quad processor, 8GB RAM and 64GB SSD drive. It is so much faster than the 8GB Pi4B with 256GB SSD that I had started playing with HA on. Just booting up is a fraction of what the Pi took.

Riscy, it does sound like youv'e got a bit more going on in HA than I have but I have got the 8GB RPi 4 so that possibly helps me. I'm hoping to get my SSD (SATA not an M.2) setup in place of the SD card this week so I'm looking forward to seeing a HA performance increase

hi folks - how do you get the givenergy plugs visible in home assistant? ive added givtcp and can see my invertor/battery but not the plus... also struggling to get them connected to Alexa?

cheers,
mick