I’m new to home automation and smart home stuff, and I’m wondering what plugs I should get.
I did a search through the forums but most of the posts I read are from 2+ years ago, or for different countries (I’m in the US), and it’s hard to find recommendations for basic plugs that are cheap.
By “basic” I mean that I don’t need any fancy power monitoring or anything like that (although it would still be a plus). Mainly I just want the ability to turn on/off a plug through SmartThings and to be able to tell if it is on or off.
This is an excellent question and one that gets asked about once a month, so you can always check the forum first for questions that you figure will be pretty popular.
See the following ( The topic title is a clickable link)
And, yeah, right now it’s the IKEA at $9.99 in the US and £9.97 in the UK.
You might also find the following two topics of interest. The first is the device class features FAQ:
And, the following FAQ on how to lay out your network and repeaters as that can also impact your device selection. Start with post 11 in the following thread, read that, then go up to the top and read the whole thread.
How does turning it on/off work? Is it like a switch (in app, I mean) that just changes its state to the opposite state, or can it be turned definitively OFF and ON separately?
For example, if I’m away from home and want to turn a fish tank light off, can I send an OFF signal or do I have to just hit an ambiguous button in an app and hope I’m actually turning it from on to off rather than off to on?
And can the plug tell me if it is off or on? I know it can’t monitor power consumption, but can it at least tell what state it is in?
It’s a simple on/off Switch. no energy monitoring. And if everything is working correctly, the current status shows in the app.
However, there’s no guarantee that things will be running correctly. You can just search the forum for “reliability” for that.
And as far as using it with the Fishtank: don’t rely on it for anything that might affect health or welfare of the aquarium stock. That’s not me saying it: that’s what the terms of usage for SmartThings say.
So if you’re OK if the light sometimes remains on when you wanted it off or remains off when you wanted it on, then it might be a good match to the use case.
Mini Smart Plug Outlet Works with Amazon Alexa Google Assistant IFTTT, No Hub Required, ETL and FCC Listed Only 2.4GHz Wifi Enabled Remote Control Smart Socket by Gosund
You could always put a webcam on the fish tank for remote entertainment and to check to see if the plug worked as it should. I do something similar by putting a webcam in the garage to make sure my garage door is indeed closed.
Respectfully, zwave and zigbee are equally stable when properly deployed, and the model you linked to is one of the more expensive smart plugs at over $30, and therefore does not fit this particular thread.
I noticed you are using the coolcam logo as your avatar. We welcome the participation of manufacturer or retailer employees in this forum, but ask that you make sure that your recommendations are on topic to each individual thread.
Z wave plus does have a very real advantage over zigbee in having a longer range. In addition, Wi-Fi does not interfere with Z wave, which can make it easier to deploy, particularly in households that are using boosted Wi-Fi. Feel free to introduce those points when they are relevant.
Replaced my Sylvania 72922-A with IKEA Tradfri outlet yesterday to get past Xiaomi issue. Install was a breeze. Now I am considering replacing all my cheap outlets I bought on Amazon and OTA flashed to Sonoff, with Tradfri . The big advantage here is local processing.
