Water monitoring: Flo by Moen vs LeakSmart

[SMHarman]

1 hour ago, Scott Haviaras said:

I have a few homes that I have built for clients that are not full time homes, and the challenge using Moen flow is the away mode does not seem to allow for water still being used, between pool autofill, ice machines always making fresh ice, water filtration regenerating so this takes away (away mode).   The next issue is I have own owner who is not at the house for 2 months and then when he comes, he brings 8-12 people now all of a sudden Moen is trying to go from now showers and laundry to 12 people taking showers. 

My thought is if I can integrate control 4 with Moen Flo then all my water bugs can maybe be tied into the Moen flo, allowing almost no water damage before the water shuts off.   Then maybe there is away to have more flexablity in the away mode so the device can learn away and 12 people being at the house?

Anyone have any similar issues and solutions?

 

Thank you,

 

Scott

I've stopped using Away mode for that reason trusting thst it alerts at about 80 gallons and that's not so much to mop up..

On the arrive for the weekend problem you can tie to motion sensors and times of day and programmatically put it in sleep mode for the 4-10pm and 7-10am shower hours. It learns even while sleeping. 

Mine is put in sleep mode when thr rachio turns on to water the garden as well. 

Yiu could also make that a button on screens etc. 

[antneed]

On 6/13/2020 at 11:28 AM, South Africa C4 user said:

I’ve got Flo by Moen and my comments are as follows:

1. The native app and functionality is phenomenal.

2. The native app is regularly being updated with new features and I am very happy with it.

3. The native app allows flawlessly for multiple devices and multiple residences.  I have 7 devices across 2 residences and can turn each on and off separately.  I can see combined or separate water usage for the day, the week and also for any period that there is history for.

4. I can see pressure, temperature and flow rate for each of these.

5. The @Cinegration Flo driver looks really great with updates of data every 5 minutes.

6. The Cinegration Flo driver is regularly updated on Driver Central, so I would expect it to keep up with the ever developing native Flo app changes.

7. the only challenge that I have is that the Control4 driver does not yet deal with multiple devices and residences properly but I know that Cinegration is working on fixing this and I would guess that this would be resolved in a week or two.

I’d recommend Flo by Moen and the Cinegration driver. If you plan on multiple devices / residences you may want to wait a week or two before integrating with C4.

1.  Is the Cinegration driver the native Flo by Moen driver or is it a third party driver 

2. what is the cost of this driver ?

[South Africa C4 user]

4 hours ago, antneed said:

1.  Is the Cinegration driver the native Flo by Moen driver or is it a third party driver 

2. what is the cost of this driver ?

Driver was developed by @Cinegration and is available to purchase at driver central

[antneed]

Is the only Flo by Moen driver for C4?

[South Africa C4 user]

2 hours ago, antneed said:

Is the only Flo by Moen driver for C4?

AFAIK, this is the only one.

[South Africa C4 user]

The only negative with this driver is that it does not keep a persistent connection so if you want to see when water is actually running or get a notification that water starts flowing / stops flowing, you need to do a workaround.  The best possible workaround for this is to leave the website (or app) open (and refreshing) on another device.  Flo then keeps all connections up to date.  
 

Everything else works brilliantly with Control4 (water usage, controlling and monitoring the valve state, changing modes, Alerts setup in Flo etc.).
 

@Cinegration - this would be a nice enhancement at some stage.

Edited May 29, 2022 by South Africa C4 user

[antneed]

9 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

The only negative with this driver is that it does not keep a persistent connection so if you want to see when water is actually running or get a notification that water starts flowing / stops flowing, you need to do a workaround.  The best possible workaround for this is to leave the website (or app) open (and refreshing) on another device.  Flo then keeps all connections up to date.  
 

Everything else works brilliantly with Control4 (water usage, controlling and monitoring the valve state, changing modes, Alerts setup in Flo etc.).
 

@Cinegration - this would be a nice enhancement at some stage.

Thank you. I’ve been wanting to add this driver and nice to hear it integrates well With C4.

[Cinegration]

Hi Everyone,

  We worked closely with the Flo team to get this driver working so while the API is private we have an agreement to use and distribute a driver solution to Control4 customers :).

On more instant feedback... There have been a few discussions on this and we are looking into making this a reality in the future.  We would like to see a local API with websockets or other 'non-cloud' solution to get the data.  With real time cloud solutions a web server always has to remain active and with this being water monitoring I don't know if we want to have a server supporting this load

https://drivercentral.io/platforms/control4-drivers/utility/flo-by-moen/

Thanks!

Cindev Team

[South Africa C4 user]

For anyone using the Flo driver, I strong recommend pairing this with the Janus Technologies BMS Monitor.  This gives great visual feedback on water usage on Touchscreens or in the C4 App.

[Don Cohen]

48 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

For anyone using the Flo driver, I strong recommend pairing this with the Janus Technologies BMS Monitor.  This gives great visual feedback on water usage on Touchscreens or in the C4 App.

Interesting. If I'm only using this with a single Moen Flo shutoff valve, would the "BMS Monitor Lite" be sufficient? It's quite a bit more cost effective than the full version.

[South Africa C4 user]

3 hours ago, Don Cohen said:

Interesting. If I'm only using this with a single Moen Flo shutoff valve, would the "BMS Monitor Lite" be sufficient? It's quite a bit more cost effective than the full version.

As far as I know, yes it would although I suspect that as you use it, you may find yourself monitoring other things (depending on the size of your system).  I started with just monitoring a couple of thermostats and now (a couple of years later), I monitor (quite literally) hundreds of items including my Flo meters.