Flume smart home integration, free and open source
Water usage, flow and leak alerts from your Flume smart water monitor.
Published by prohand
- Devices
- Version 1.0.1
- Requires Gladys >=5.1.0
- ★ 0
This integration connects Gladys to a Flume smart water monitor: the sensor strapped on your water meter, and the bridge that relays it to the Flume cloud. Gladys gets your water usage, the flow of the moment, leak alerts and the battery state of the sensor, and can use them in scenes and on the dashboard.
Before you start
- Your Flume sensor and bridge must be installed and working in the Flume app.
- Flume has no local API: everything goes through the Flume cloud. Gladys needs internet access, and the readings arrive with the delay of the Flume cloud (about a minute).
Get your API client
Every Flume account can create a personal API client. It is what lets Gladys talk to the Flume cloud on your behalf.
- Sign in to portal.flumewater.com with your Flume account.
- Open Settings, then API Access.
- Generate a client if there is none yet, and copy its Client ID and its Client Secret.
Configuration
In Gladys, open Integrations, then Flume, then the Configuration tab.
| Field | What to put |
|---|---|
| Flume e-mail | The e-mail you sign in to the Flume app with. |
| Flume password | The password of that account. It is only sent to Flume. |
| Client ID | The Client ID of your API client. |
| Client secret | The Client Secret of the same API client. |
| Refresh interval (s) | How often the usage is read, 60 to 3600 seconds. Default: 120. |
| Running water threshold (L/min) | Litres in the last minute from which the water counts as running. Default: 0.5. |
Save, then click Test the connection: the answer lists each sensor with its usage of the day, its leak state and its connection.
Why not refresh every second?
Flume allows about 120 requests per hour per account. Each refresh costs one request per sensor; the device list and the alerts are read every 5 minutes on top of that. With the default 120 seconds, a home with one sensor uses about 54 requests per hour. If Flume answers that the limit is reached, the integration pauses for 10 minutes by itself and says so on the configuration screen.
Devices
Open the Discover tab of the integration: each Flume sensor shows up there, named after its Flume location. Add it to Gladys. It carries:
| Feature | Unit | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Water flow (last minute) | L | Litres used during the last complete minute, which reads as L/min. |
| Water used today | L | Since midnight, at the meter's time zone. |
| Water used this month | L | Since the 1st of the month. |
| Leak | 0/1 | 1 while a Flume smart leak alert is unread. |
| Low battery | 0/1 | 1 when Flume says the battery is low, or a low battery alert is unread. |
All volumes are in litres, even for a home set in gallons in the Flume app: Gladys has no gallon unit.
The badge of the device says cloud when everything works, and unreachable when
the sensor, its bridge or the Flume cloud is offline.
How the leak goes back to 0
Flume keeps an alert as long as it is unread. Open it in the Flume app (or mark it as read): at the next check, at most 5 minutes later, the leak feature goes back to 0.
Scenes
Triggers
- A Flume alert is raised: a new alert from Flume — leak, high flow, low battery,
bridge offline, or another one. Filter on the sensor and on the kind of alert. The
following actions can read
alert,titleandmessage. An alert that was already standing when the integration started does not fire it again. - Water starts or stops running: the litres of the last minute crossed the running
water threshold of the configuration. Filter on the sensor and on started / stopped;
the following actions can read
stateandliters.
For a threshold on a value (more than 500 L today, for instance), use the standard Gladys trigger on the device features: they are ordinary sensors.
Actions
- Read the Flume water usage: reads from Flume the litres used over a period (last
hour, today, last 24 hours, this week, this month). Outputs:
litersandcubic_meters. - Refresh Flume now: reads Flume right away instead of waiting for the next
refresh. Outputs:
leak,water_running,liters_last_minute,liters_today— for one sensor, or for all of them when none is chosen.
Example: "Every day at 22:00, read today's usage, and send me a message if it is more than 800 litres."
Dashboard widget
Add the Flume water widget to a dashboard. It shows the last minute, today and the month as live tiles, the flow of the last 24 hours, the leak, water, battery and connection status, the latest alert, and a Refresh button. Pick a sensor in its settings, or leave it empty for the first sensor of the account.
Troubleshooting
- "Flume refused the login": check the e-mail and the password in the Flume app, then the Client ID and Client Secret on portal.flumewater.com. A password changed in the Flume app must be changed here too.
- No sensor in the Discover tab: click Test the connection. If it says "no sensor on this account", finish the setup in the Flume app.
- Unreachable badge: the Flume app shows the same state; check the bridge (power, Wi-Fi) and the sensor batteries.
- Values late by a minute or two: that is the delay of the Flume cloud itself.
The integration logs (Gladys, Integrations, Flume, logs) never contain your password, your client secret or your tokens.
Configuration settings
These are the settings Flume asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.
| Setting | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Getting started | section | No | Flume only answers through its cloud: the integration needs your Flume account and the personal API client of that account. Create the client on portal.flumewater.com (Settings, API Access) and copy its client ID and client secret below. |
| Flume e-mail | string | Yes | The e-mail you sign in to the Flume app with. |
| Flume password | secret | Yes | The password of that Flume account. It is only sent to Flume. |
| Client ID | string | Yes | Client ID of your API client (portal.flumewater.com, Settings, API Access). |
| Client secret | secret | Yes | Client secret of the same API client. |
| Refresh interval (s) | number | No | How often the water usage is read, in seconds (60 to 3600). Flume allows about 120 requests per hour: each refresh costs one request per sensor, plus the device list and the alerts every 5 minutes. |
| Running water threshold (L/min) | number | No | Litres used in the last minute from which the water counts as running, for the "Water starts or stops running" trigger. 0 counts any drop. |
How to install Flume in Gladys
- In Gladys, open Integrations: Flume appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
- Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (
ghcr.io/prohand/gladys-flume:1.0.1), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration). - Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
- You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/prohand/gladys-flume.
Flume requires Gladys >=5.1.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.
Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.
About external integrations
Flume is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by prohand, not by the Gladys core team.
- Browse all integrations, native and community
- Build and publish your own external integration
- Source code on GitHub — source of this documentation