May 102013
Belkin WeMo Home Automation Switch + Motion Sensor bundle for Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
- Turn Electronics on/off from Anywhere
- Motion Control your Lamp, never walk into a dark room again
- Get SMS or Email Notifications when movement is detected at home (powered by IFTTT.com)
- You’ve already got everything you need: WeMo works with your existing Wi-Fi router and any Apple iPod touch, iPhone, iPad – iOS v5 or higher
- Modular system. You can add additional WeMo Switches and WeMo Motion sensors easily, any time. Control as much or as little of your house as you want to
- Operates over Wi-Fi and mobile internet, at home and away
- Included: WeMo Motion and WeMo Switch : Electrical Rating 120V~/15A/60Hz/1800W
The Belkin WeMo Switch and WeMo Motion Kit gives you wireless control of your home appliances and electronics, turning devices of your choice on or off as soon as movement is detected. The sensor plugs into an outlet and detects motion up to 10 feet away. It then sends a wireless signal to the WeMo Switch to turn the connected device either on or off. Using the free WeMo App you can program a light to turn on when you walk into the house or the TV to turn off when you leave. In addition to motio
List Price: $ 99.99
Price: $ 66.98
I really like this… but it isn’t for everything…,
Update: 12/16/12: There have been several firmware updates since the product first came out. The device seems to hang less often now than when I noted below… on the order of once every 2 to 3 weeks.
I should note, I have several IP Power Switch boxes. I use them for things like controlling my network, network devices and stereo devices. These work off of wired ethernet, and have many plugs on the back that are addressable. I note this only to make clear I already understand some of the shortcomings of these types of devices.
OK, that said, these are really nice for the right application.
Power Throughput
First, since I searched high and low for this information (on Belkin’s site – everywhere) and could not find it… the device packaging indicates that it can handle 15A throughput. Amazon should really add that to the product description, since I consider it pretty important.
Setup (MAC address printed on the back is wrong)
There is a trick in the setup and it ended up wasting about an hour of time. That is, the MAC address written on the back of the device is off by one. I’m guessing that is because it probably has 2 wi-fi network cards in it. I’ll note that in a second. But, if you have your wireless network setup to filter by MAC address, the address printed on the back is off by one… so add one to it for the wireless network you will need to “filter” (and for those not technical, remember it is HEX, so one more than 9 is A, and one more than F is like adding 10). you can use a hex calculator on the internet if that isn’t enough. I won’t bore you with how I figured this out… and they may change it at some later date, but that is the current situation.
Setup (Aside from the wrong MAC address)
It is (in my opinion) really nice. I think they have 2 wi-fi adapters in the device, because you first setup your iPhone (or other iOS device) to connect to the switch. I was assuming once you connected through the iOS app and entered your network information, you would loose connection and just have to assume everything worked, as it switched the single wi-fi adapter’s settings and connected to your wifi network. But, conveniently, it stayed connected to my iPhone, helping diagnose the problem… thus I figured there were 2 wifi adapters. I think this is a really nice touch – and will really help. Kind of nullified by putting the wrong adapter’s MAC address on the back of the device – but, we all make mistakes. The setup otherwise went smooth.
WAN Setup
Effortless – I did nothing. No router settings, technical people will understand the weakness of this approach, but for everyone else, it is mindless… just worked.
IFTT (If This Then That)
Is a website not associated with Belkin other than that it supports their device. You should note, it only supports a single device currently. So, you can’t get too complicated, but it does not it will support more than one at some time in the future. I really like this function. There is a fair amount of capability when a sensor is triggered (if you have the sensor device), or a switch was turned on/off. You can tell the IFTT website to do something, like send you and email notifying you of such. And conceivably significantly more at some point in the future.
How it Works
There is a nice iOS device that reports the state of the device (currently on or off, or in the case of the motion sensor sensing motion or not sensing motion). In the case of the power switch, you can change it’s state from the iOS device or by pressing the “override” button on the device itself.” In the case of the motion sensor, you can tell it what to do when motion is sensed… like power on a switch. It should be noted, the sensor and the power switch are two separate devices. The power switch that comes in the motion sensor pack, is the same power switch you can buy individually, and neither the sensor or the power switch are tied to each other specifically. That is to say, the motion sensor can control any belkin switch. It has a lot of potential.
How it Doesn’t Work
It seems to have the same weaknesses that any wireless network device has… loosing connection after long periods. This may well be fixed in a firmware updated, but for me, right now, the power devices seem to crash after being plugged in for a couple of days. I had it on a nite light in our hall (just to test reliability). I setup a schedule to turn the light on at dusk and off at sunrise. Pretty simple, and something you’d want to work before heavily investing in them. It works for 2 or 3 days, then “hangs.” Doesn’t show up in the iOS app, and won’t respond to the button on the device. After pressing the button, it would “reconnect” to the network after a minute or two, and be fine for another couple days. This didn’t just happen once. Also note it is located…
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connection,
drops wifi way too often, and needs re-setting up each time so this really is not reliable or useful for essental security lighting or something that has to be shut off or on remotely, a little expensive, great idea if it actually worked, perhaps they will come out with one that works reliably, we had both sensor and just switch but both lost connection every 3 hours to 2 days or so, belkin service and tech support no help, returned without problems at the apple store, bad belkin, good apple store
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Great concept, IFT is good, tech support worst ever!,
Good idea and product when it works. Set up 1 device with IFT and it works great. Bought another but cannot set up with IFT as IFT only supports one Wemo! Tried setting up Wemo rules for that device but could not get them to work. Called the ‘tech support’ (offshore) and after spelling everything out 4 or 5 times (do not seem to understand English very easily) all they wanted was loads of personal information before they were prepared to help (including email, phone number etc). The whole call to get the rules working on the device took over 45 minutes – half of this was taking personal information. At the end of it the Wemo rule still says ‘Turn on at (null)’ and won’ store a time. All in all a big failure. In the end I figure out a workaround. I added a rule, then disabled it (it came up with the null times). Leaving that rule there, I added new (enabled) rules and they worked! Belkin need to get the device working properly and GET REAL SUPPORT.
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