Belkin WeMo Compatibility with SmartThings

Devices & Integrations
1

Greetings,

For over a year now, I’ve owned 7 Belkin wall outlet switches and 3 light switches that I’ve been using with an Apple AirPort Extreme (5th Generation) router. We’re an all iOS & Mac OS X household and we’ve had absolutely no issues controlling the WeMo devices under iOS with the official Belkin WeMo app over Wi-Fi or at&t 4G. I’ve even configured the front porch light (WeMo Light Switch) and a small bedroom lamp (WeMo Wall Outlet) to use IFTTT on a sun up / sundown EST schedule.

Last week, I purchased a SmartThings hub from Amazon, and I finally got around to setting it up last night.

After getting the SmartThings hub unpacked and connected to the router, I installed the WeMo Connect SmartThings Labs app and started searching for my WeMo outlet & wall switches. The good news is that after about 5 minutes, the SmartThings hub found every WeMo switch in my house. I’ve also been able to configure all 10 switches inside of the SmartThings Dashboard / Things panel and I’ve also been able to configure the Dashboard / Lights & Switches panel with short cuts for Living Room (3 WeMo wall switches), Master Bedroom (1 WeMo wall switch and 1 light switch), and a kids bedroom (3 WeMo wall switches).

The bad news is that I haven’t been able to reliably control any of the WeMo wall outlet or light switches using the SmartThings Dashboard / Things or Lights & Switches short cut panels over Wi-Fi or at&t 4G.

My experiences under Dashboard / Things has been sometimes the lights turn on immediately (as they should) to hanging on TURNINGON or TURNINGOFF and never fully completing the ON or OFF command. The only way to get the tile to fix itself from one of those two states, is to click the little gears icon of the light in question, and then hit refresh about 3 times to get the tile icon to reset itself to the correct state of either being truly ON or OFF.

My experiences under Dashboard / Lights & Switches has been anything from all lights coming on or off successfully (as they should) to a random mix of some lights (1 out of 3, 2 out of 3, etc.) as being turned all on or all off. The only way to get all the lights to successfully turn all on or all off when they get out of sync is to simply keep pushing the shortcut over and over under all lights are either all on or all off.

This is all very frustrating to say the least. While I’m no software programmer, I almost feel as if there isn’t a long enough for / next loop for firing off the on or off command to multiple switches. I think the SmartThings hub is firing off the commands to multiple switches so fast that it isn’t keeping track of which switches have successfully turn themselves on or off.

While trying to figure out why the SmartThings hub / app isn’t working correctly, I’d periodically flip over to the official Belkin WeMo app and without fail, I could reliable control all switches throughout the household with no issues. So it appears to me to be a problem with the SmartThings hub / application.

Questions:

1.) Have I overlooked some basic setup task that is causing my issues with the WeMo switches not functioning correctly under the SmartThings hub / application? (Again, for over a year, I’ve had no issues with the switches and the official Belkin WeMo iOS app.)

2.) Is there another brand of switches out there that I should be looking at that function better with the SmartThings hub? If so, I’d rather cut my losses now and dump my WeMo switches on eBay before I make any more investment in WeMos.

3.) Is the flaky behavior I’m experiencing with the WeMo hardware about the same with other hardware brands like Z-Wave, etc? If so, I’d rather return the SmartThings hub and get my money back while I wait for the home automation hub technology to improve.

I’m really hoping that I’ve overlooked something simple in the setup phase since I feel that it’s real close to working perfectly!

Thank you!

Derrick

2 Likes
2

Derrick,

This is my take, I have 1 WeMo light switch, 1 WeMo Wall Outlet and 1 WeMo Insight. The Insight isn’t even supported by ST, so I use the WeMo app to work with it. I love the ability to track usage with the WeMo Insight. All of the WeMo outlets are not as quick on the responsiveness as the Z-wave. I have about 25 Z-wave wall outlets and they respond much quicker than the WeMo switches. I don’t get the “Turning On” and “Turning Off” as often as I use to.

You could try removing and re-adding the switches to the ST app again. I’ve done that w/ the Sonos and WeMo when they were acting up, and it seemed to make them more responsive.

Z-wave switches, GE 45609, (which are about 5 bucks cheaper at Lowes than Amazon) http://www.lowes.com/pd_339577-1353-45637_0__?productId=3707736&Ntt=ge+z-wave+switch&pl=1&currentURL=%3FNtt%3Dge%2Bz-wave%2Bswitch&facetInfo=

Are more responsive than all of the WeMo connections I have. I think perhaps after WeMo gets out of SmartLabs, it make be more responsive but that is not for sure. The other issue with having so a lot of WeMo switches vs Z-wave is the # of IPs your local router will need, if you are getting into the 30 or 40 switches and the amount of the Wifi interference from all of the Wifi Switches. The Z-wave operates at 900 mhz, so shouldn’t interfere with Wifi at all, the WeMo are actual Wifi devices that use an IP and need to connect to your local Wifi.

My suggestion, is attempt to re-configure but I would dump the WeMo light switches on eBay and go with Z-wave. The Z-wave is more flexible, you can set up a 2nd controller remote to control your lights, and the switches are going to be cheaper an the WeMo light switches.

I kept my one WeMo light switch, because I got it as a gift.

I hope that helps.

Morgan

1 Like
3

Bump. Any idea when w/ WeMo Insight switch will be integrated w/ ST?

4

I have the same problem , its on and off. I have 18 wemo switches and 2 insights which are not supported yet. I have seen if the hub is running for sometime and one does not have any network outages the poll commands are executed frequently (See Support -> Debug -> turn on debug) to see the details happening in the activity. I also believe this is still in the smartthing labs stage so its not robust yet. For example when I trip a motion sensor it says its sending data to the switch to turn on but nothing happens. I go to the wemo app , it works most of the time when selecting that button. I’m on the latest Wemo update and the experience has been consistent since the last couple of days. Also after a hub update the wemo’s were performing better now its a hit or miss .

5

Same here…I just bought a hub (switched over from Revolv after they discontinued) and I’ve been really disappointed with the WeMo functionality so far, I have 4 switches and 4 outlets so am fairly heavily invested - really don’t want to switch. Devices frequently don’t show the right status (unless I go in and refresh) and even worse, occasionally do not respond to commands. Everything works great w/ the WeMo app. WeMo control was perfect with Revolv so I know it can be done, hoping that an update to improve performance is coming soon?

6

I’m having similar problems. My one wemo switch does come on for me at the times that I specify, but it routinely shows the wrong status and I have to hit refresh to make it work.

I’m actually having the same issue with my hue lights. They come on when they are supposed to when on a timer. But the smartthings app often shows the wrong status and I need to refresh. This is particularly the case when I use a different app to control the lights.

How often does smartthings query these devices to find our their status?

7

I have one WeMo Light Switch and it works well until it gets stuck and the device is unable to get the status and unable turn off the light. I did notice in the IDE that an error occurs when I try to turn off the light.

TRACE: Got SetBinaryStateResponse = Error

As others have mentioned, the WeMo app works flawless.

8

I may have found a “solution” to my WeMo problem.

I go to the WeMo settings page, remove the tick mark behind the WeMo Light Switch and exit with “Done”.

After that I reenable the Light Switch by checking it in WeMo connect. As a result, the device becomes responsive again.

I am sure there is something for ST to fix, but in the mean time I may have an interim solution.

9

I kinda found couple of ways around this (having 18 switches and doing the other workarounds is not easy).

  • First update the wemo’s to the latest firmware 7166 (for those that take it)
  • Second verify these work in the Wemo app itself , sometimes they do not work in the wemo app
  • Insight switches are notorious for not working in the Wemo app itself , this is not supported in ST
  • Setup the start and stop timings in the wemo app itself instead of smartthings so auto actions work just fine with the wemo irrespective of ST
  • When the Wemo motion does not work with ST , restart it , then it starts working
  • If the wemo devices misbehave then goto the wemo connect app , go into discovery mode for 5 mins and then tap on Done , most cases it starts working well

Simple case the more stuff you automate using Wemo’s own scheduling the less you’re dependent on ST. The cases where interdevice interaction is necessary use ST and hope for the best. For now my Wemo’s have been a hit or miss for a week but since most of my actions are “Sunset” , Motion based (Wemo motion) they are scheduled so these have minimal interactions with ST

10

WeMo has gone from bad to worse for me. I thought that by completely removing the light switch and WeMo Connect I could do a “fresh” install.

After trial and error I was able to remove WeMo.

Unfortunately, now WeMo doesn’t even detect the light switch. Fortunately, the native WeMo app still works.

11

All my wemos has long been replaced by Aeon’s smart energy switches. I have couple of them lying around and one on a microwave oven just for the heck of it. They are horrible.

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Unfortunately, Amazon does not ship Aeon products international. :frowning:

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Yesterday all the Wemo switches worked perfectly for me , all events fired on time and the good night event shuts off all the lights automatically , lets see if this is consistent today. All the Wemo’s are on the latest firmware. The Wemo app always works flawlessly

14

Check out my post, I fixed the connection issues between wemo and smartthings