Switch IDEV0001P5 – WiFi Smart Plug w/ Energy Monitoring, No Hub Required, Works with Apple Home Kit

Remote on/off and with Alexa, Voice Control, Kool
How kool is this. Work Great. i got 2 (so far). They were easy to get attached to network and app, sometimes it just takes a little patience with devices like this, don’t rush.I connected a space heater to each switch, in different parts of the room.Now with the app on my ipad(s) i have remote control without getting up from my desk where my ipad is to switch them on or off. yes of course it works wherever my ipad is, but i mean previously if i was at my desk, i’d have to get up, walk around the room or house switching things on or off, now with these switches i can control whatever is plugged into a switch even if the switch was in another room of another area of the house, like down stairs or in the garage, all from my bedroom or office, as long as they are on your network. .With my smartphone i have control wherever i am, it even works when i’m away, say at work, i can check the status of the switches in the smartphone app and turn them off or on as needed.I added alexa and a group within the alexa app called “heaters” and assigned the “bedroom heater side” and “bedroom heater rear” to this group, then without having to even get out of bed i can just say “Alexa, turn heaters on” and both come on. i still have individual control over each by saying “turn bedroom heater rear on” and alexa does that. You of course can name the switches anything you want, i just choose to use the room device location to make it easier for me to locate, but with alexa also you can create better voice shortcuts as it did with just “heaters”.The switches also have power monitoring, which not only tells you if the switch is on or off, but in the app you can view current draw, now, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or all time and average daily hours the device is on. Put in your electric rate or use default average and it tells you how much it is costing you based on the average daily use of what is connected to that switch to run that device for say the month. my little space heat cost me $8.60 a month to run. this is way kool and very helpful, as if i need to shave expenses i can see to try to make cutbacks.You can also set up scheduled events, like to turn off at 9am monday thru friday (while you’re away at work), or turn on say at 4:30pm a little before you come home so everything is warm when you get there.You can use these with small appliances like lights, fans, heaters etc, as long as what you plug in stays on when the power turns off, meaning some electronic devices, when have an on/off soft or electronic switch, and when power cuts out (what the idevice switch is doing) and then back on, they remain in the off setting. those won’t work. But for things with old fashioned physical toggle switches these are great. Jsut make sure you get use to switching the device off using the app instead of the power switch on the device, that has to remain in the on position for the idevices to have control over it.These would be most useful also for elderly, bedridden or hand-capped people to have control of a device where they can’t easily get to.

Flexible and feature-rich, some physical design flaws, needs a modern network
This is a revised review now that I have finally corrected the biggest problem with these devices. I have about 40 of their devices, mostly wall switches, occasional plugs (indoor and outdoor), plus some three and four way switches and two thermostats, installed.For several years they’ve been terribly unreliable, and iDevices technical support has been hopeless at helping. They have various troubleshooting and diagnostic functions in their software that let you send them data about your network, but most are hard to get to actually upload, and all of them don’t seem to help. My devices, once I got to having more than a dozen, would drop out as “unreachable” intermittently, and inconsistently — a device might work in the iDevices app, not work in Apple HomeKit, and work in Alexa, or any other combination. Over the course of a week or so, more and more devices would become unreachable, until I restarted the WAP they were connected to (at iDevices’s suggestion I had a dedicated one just for them) and then went around the house restarting them all one by one. After that, they’d all be reachable for a few hours, or there might be one that stubbornly refused.At the time I had Netgear networking equipment. I’ve recently discovered that the Netgear line often has troubles with multicast, particularly with larger networks with more devices. Failures of multicast discovery had been affecting other things too, notably my HEOS speakers and my printer, though I didn’t realize the pattern. Today I installed a Google Nest WiFi mesh network and instantly all the devices became, and remained, reachable. I am told Eero would do just as well, and probably AmpliFi would also work. One wonders why I’m more than two years into trying to get iDevices to help me make their products reliable only to stumble upon the solution myself.With that in mind, the good:They work from and with almost everything. Alexa, Siri, the app, IFTTT (though scene support is notoriously lacking), Apple HomeKit and its automations. (A web interface would be nice, though.)They look slick.They are mostly well made.No need for any kind of hub, which eliminates a major point of both failure and complexity.A very slick app.The bad:An unfortunate design puts the reset button easily bumped into when trying to turn things off.Three and four way installs, and the sticky add-a-switches, use Bluetooth which often cannot reach as far as needed.There’s no way to change a device’s network connection other than to delete it (and every scene, trigger, and automation attached to it) and then rebuild it.Dimmer switches seem to be prone to a catastrophic failure where they turn on and refuse to turn off.On balance: make sure you have a nice modern network that supports multicast robustly and can handle many devices. Then, these are a great choice to go with. Though if you don’t mind having to have a hub, you might well do better, and for less money.

Purchased two of these and they work flawlessly, integrating perfectly with HomeKit.The main reason why I opted for the iDevices Switch over the competitors is the side plug. This allows using these behind furniture so that they don’t stick out much further than if the Switch was not used. These also take up just enough space vertically so that the second receptacle is free to be used by either a regular plug or another Switch – another advantage of the Switch over some of the other competitors. The multiple colour selectable night light is nice with full control of the brightness and saturation, and the option to turn it on and off independently of the main plug. These also feel like quality products, with a nice weight and solid feel to them.These were my first dive into home automation and HomeKit, but I intend to incorporate more HomeKit accessories now.

Works like a charm. No issues once it’s setup. However there are a few specific router and setup steps that aren’t mentioned in the very skinny installation instructions. Had to go to iDevices website. Found what I needed without problem but if you don’t look there you might have issues setting it up. However now that it’s running it works great. Very happy with it.