Device to trigger flows based on power level threshold?

General
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Sorry. I think I'm taking some things for granted here. Let me back up. I'm not referring to anything in node red. I'm referring to rules entered into the tasmota console interface. And I'm not looking for feedback. I'm just sharing my experiences with my little project with getting tasmota to communicate energy monitoring events into node red.

Incidentally, I've been chatting with the tasmota developers on their discord channel and have learned that the delay exists because their interface was not designed for real-time energy monitoring. So, my overall design of detecting a device being turned on or off via its dumb switch (turning it essentially into a semi-smart, reporting-only, switch), because it is plugged into my sonoff s31 15A. It also, is subject to this delay regardless of which method I use (either setting a threshold in a rule or setting a PowerDelta MQTT event - I tried both).

When I have time, I plan to fork tasmota to see if I can create a setting to treat energy monitoring as a real-time, responsive feature, with minimal lag.

However, my experiences so far with the Switcheroo have been really good - much better than the Quirky Switchflip. There's more involved with my little project, but suffice it to say that the thing plugged into the sonoff is the switchflip receiver. It is the thing that I want to detect wattage changes in. The Switchflip is really sensitive/buggy. It randomly turns itself off and back on, unless it's within 1' from the transmitter, which is why I decided to try an energy monitoring smart plug. That way, I can have the transmitter and receiver right next to one another, and then control other devices when the energy usage changes.

The Switcheroo however, so far seems to not have the failings of the switchflip, so I may not bother messing with tasmota and just buy 2 more pairs of Switcheroos. The only downside is I can't loop in real smart outlets via node red.

I know I haven't explained this very well, so I apologize. I often have trouble being succinct. If this doesn't make sense, and you're curious/interested, google those two devices (switcheroo and switchflip). That might clarify things. And I know that there are other ways to accomplish the end goal here via a smart switch, but personally, I don't like smart switches - and I'm really just doing this for fun anyway.

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You might want to move this from the General channel to "Share your projects" then?

It is this kind of thing that so often leads me to ditch the generic builds and go back to my own. After all, it really isn't that hard to build something custom using the Arduino IDE and the many well supported libraries.

So going back to your original ask. I have recently noted that in the US at least, there seems to be a lot of choice in regard to in-wall light switches. Here in the UK it is a pain because we don't have full wiring in the wall, generally just a loop of the 1 wire.

Included in that choice is quite a number of traditional looking flip switches that are smart using ESP chips.

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It's not the look that I like/dislike about newer style versus older style toggles/switches. It's the functionality/usage. My complaint about decora is that you have to be able to see them to use them quickly/efficiently. You can't blindly swipe an arm against the wall in the dark, up or down, to turn it off/on in one try. This is easy with an old style toggle. I frequently flip a toggle as I leave/enter without looking, but I cannot do that with a decora.

And I don't think that newer smart style toggles have effectively replicated the blind-swipe functionality either. While you can snag them with a blind swipe, there's not that satisfying, smooth soft "flip". Your arm/hand hits it but the haptic feedback is not as clear. You can't as easily tell if the swipe was successful or not.

As far as appearance goes, I can't say that I find any switch style particularly attractive. I think Decora though looks more modern, and in that regard, since our house was built in 1920 and we like the vintage aesthetic, a traditional toggle fits in better (though we do have some decoras installed by the previous owner).

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Well I don't know what the decora switches look like. You might want to do a search on YouTube though as I know someone (in the US) recently did a bunch of tests on smart wall switches.

Anyway, I'm certainly not disagreeing with you, you have to be happy with both the look and feel. Personally, I've never bothered with smart wall switches because, in the UK anyway, they are far more bother than they are worth. All of our automated lighting is via sockets with smart plugs. We prefer stand-alone lighting anyway. All bar our two decorative overhead room lights (my wife likes dangly glass things!) are LED anyway and doesn't really matter that much if they get left on for a while. Only the bathroom, kitchen and breakfast room overhead lights get any real use (all LED downlighters).

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Decora switches are those ubiquitous flat rocker switches. I only learned that in the past year from looking into smart switches for my bathroom remodel.

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