LABS RELEASE: Quirky Pivot Power Genius

Thank you @twack! Just ordered 4 of them :slight_smile:

I hoped you ordered from ThinkGeek. Only $19.99 on sale right now, and it says they’re in stock.

Enjoy!
Twack

Thx for info. I ordered from Thinkgeek.

You can get an additional 20% off the Pivot Power Genius on thinkgeek bringing the total to only $15.99 for the next 16 hours using think promo code FIFTHOFF

Sale must be over :frowning:

Missed it.

I have two of these strips, got them set up and added to SmartThings no problem. I did run into an issue though:

Yesterday I cut the power to my home network. The power strips reconnected and receive commands just fine, however, they no longer report their status to SmartThings. When tapping ‘refresh’ within the mobile app SmartThings updates the state of the switch. I tried just refreshing the installed connect app but that didn’t help.

Any ideas/suggestions?

There is an update coming to fix this exact issue. It was submitted today. Hopefully will be in next week’s release.

Twack

Great to hear @twack. Also, incredible job on this and the TCP integration! Made a huge difference in my setup and capabilities, especially on a budget. I appreciate the hard work more than I could ever show.

Thanks!

I’m glad you’re able to enjoy the works. :slight_smile:

@twack - absolutely love the ability to control the Pivot Power Genius from SmartThings (bought 5 from ThinkGeek during their sale), thanks for all your contributions to the ST community! Running into one strange issue with them though and was wondering if you have come across a similar issue. Something seems to be sending off commands to the powerstrip. I am not seeing anything in the ST logs showing that an off command is being pushed to the switches, and I do not have any triggers setup in the Wink app.

Below is what is shown in the logs for a specific switch. Somewhere in between the two time stamps is where the off command was initiated.

Have you ran across any instances of the Pivot Power Genius switches randomly turning off?

@nelemansc,

Is it happening to all of the strips, or just one? Does it happen if there is a load or not? Meanwhile I’ve reached out to Quirky to see if they have seen anything like this.

Twack

I’m thinking this has nothing to do with what you are seeing @nelemansc, but I noticed if the power strips lose their wifi connection they switch the two outlets off. Not my preferred behavior, though that would be on the Quirky side of things.

@twack,

I have only hooked up one of the strips so far, but I’ll add another one to the mix to see if the issue is replicated.

@ronnycarr,

That sounds like it could be my root cause. Both outlets do switch off simultaneously. I’ll test tonight with the additional strip closer to the router to see if it is a signal strength issue.

Out of eight I have three strips hooked (2nd day using them) and so far they’ve been working fine. I’m not home to verify but I see them behaving based on app preference. I accidentally ordered 8 instead of 4 which I was going to return but now I’m thinking about keeping them all. Hope Wink is reliable with many devices.

One small update : quirky outlets don’t seem to report status correctly. Whether I manually turn an outlet on dashboard or let an app do it it always says it’s off. (So I had to click twice to manually turn them off.) In case of manual switch on the icon does change to on status but goes back to off when I go out of st app and go back to it.

@twack,.

I hooked up two additional powerstrips last night, strip #1 at ~2 feet from the router, strip #2 at ~20 feet from the router, and then the original strip (#3) hooked up in the bedroom at ~40 feet away through wood/concrete. Strips 1 & 2 were both still on this morning, while strip #3 was off. It looks like @ronnycarr 's findings match up with mine. Thanks for your input, Ronny. It would’ve taken me a bit to discover that as being the issue.

@esung,

This is a known issue. There is a fix submitted, but not released into the labs version yet. ST folks will hopefully let it go this week or next. Thanks for the observation/report though.

@nelemansc,

I have forwarded you info to the Quirky peoples. I’ll let you know what they say as soon as I get word back.

Everyone,
What would expect the strip to do if it looses WiFi connection? THink of safety issues too. Realize that it would not be able to be shut off. But then again, a normal power strip can’t be turned off remotely at all? ANyway, let me know your thoughts.

Twack

Thanks @twack. I’ll wait for the update. (Does it happen in the background or via ST app update?)

As for wifi signal loss, I think ideal way is to have them stay the same status by default with an option for off. You wouldn’t want your reading lamp turned off just because of wifi problem, but you would rather have an electric heater off when you are away and don’t know how hot it is getting. But then this is only possible with some firmware update by Quirky, I assume. On ST side, is it possible to have a report on quirky’s wifi status?

For me, I’d rather the outlets keep their current state. Even with zigbee and zwave, if I were to be away from home and lose internet connection I would not be able to turn a device off. I’m using one of these to control day and night lights on an aquarium. I don’t want my light turing off during the day randomly.

Oddly enough, the strip I’m using on my tank keeps turning off today and I can’t get it back on for a while. Both strips I have are within about 10 feet of the router. It seems they have problems keeping their wifi connection. Does smartthings just guess that it’s off when it can’t reach the strip? How else does it know that it’s actually off if it’s a wifi issue?