Quirky Spotter?

(Todd Wackford) #1

Does anyone have on these things yet? And is anyone hooking it to SmartThings yet? It is Wi-Fi only, but the end-point guru’s should be able to hack this thing pretty quick.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Quirky-Wink-Spotter-Sensor-White-PSPT1-WH01/204600546"

It looks like it may have more sensors than that are currently enabled (camera?)

TIA,
TWack

#2

Good find! The smart power strip looks promising too. Now that I finally have my Ecobee connected to my PGE smart meeter I was looking for a smart power strip to turn off the vampires during peak energy costs. If I could only figure out their API now…

(Todd Wackford) #3

Well I got the Quirky + GE Spotter…

Packing:
Cool box. Comes with wall-wort adapter. Tiny little instruction card. Had to put glasses on to read it.

Unit Aesthetics:
About 3 inch diameter x 1 inch in height. Little house shaped window on top with LED and optic sensor for programming (later). Has two dime sized magnets on base (strong) to stick to metal things. Looks kinda like a little white mini iRobot.

Setup:
Once you download the Wink app, it walks you through about 8 steps. The last 5 are just getting you ready for the blinky-light show. Anyway, you need to create an account, then choose your wireless router or AP (it finds them) and then enter in the password for your wireless. Then it tells you to put the device in pairing mode and set the phone face down on the house window. It flashes some secret flashy-light morse code into the window and then your phone buzzes and tells you success or failure.

I Started trying to set it up with my galaxy note. Could not get it to ever finish with success. One time the unit started acting like it was paired but the app kept saying failure. I looked all over the device to find a factory reset pin hole, but nope, there was none. Googled and nothing there either. Nothing on the website either. Tried removing batteries for 10 minutes, nope. BTW, had hell of a time to figure out how to open it to get to batteries. Twist cover CCW! Tried deleting and reloading the app, nope!

I started to put it back in the box and then I saw my sim-less iPhone (My SmartThings remote in garage/shop), grabbed it and downloaded the app and tried most of the above again, nope some more. then I found something after pushing a back button… “Reset Device”. Hmmmm their iOS app had something the Android app did not. Never seen that before :-). Anyway, finally got it working after about an hour+.

User Interface / Test Drive:
Very basic UI with little wheel metaphor with house shape in middle. Currently the app allows you to only to create/turn on/turn off triggers and cause simple actions. Like “If the temp goes above xx, notify me”. Or, “if motion stops, notify me”. The app doesn’t even let you see what the current sensor values are though. There’s triggers for sound, light, motion, humidity and temp. If you had their power strip you could trigger a action to turn a socket on I guess. Maybe have a fan connected to that socket to cool the spotter down, hehehe.

The little house light blinks when things happen, that’s kinda cool I guess.

Overall:
Too simple right now. There is no API that I can find so no way to make a SmartThings Thing out of it yet.

Things it should do:

  1. Allow me to see current sensor values in the app.
  2. If sound is detected, call me on my phone to listen, or record it for xx seconds and forward wave file to email/SMS.

For now:
I’ll see if the wife wants to use it to tell her when the washer/dryer is done.

(Duncan) #4

Quirky recently claimed that they “will open up & operate WINK as an independent connected platform,” though that could take a while of course.

I’m a fan of Quirky, so fingers crossed that we’ll be able to integrate these things soon.

(Alex King) #5

Quirky just opened up (and then closed - but they say it’ll be public soon) a beta for their API! I can’t wait to finally hook up my EggMinder to SmartThings (YES. IT WILL BE VERY USEFUL. FOR THINGS.) Also finally decided to pick up a Nimbus on sale at Home Depot, which should also be really fun to get integrated :slight_smile:

(Alex King) #6

So if you’re in the Quirky beta (i.e. have client ID and client secret keys), I’ve integrated the Eggminder with SmartThings – check out the device on github.

(Kevin Tierney) #7

Has anyone had any luck with these? Just noticed they are on sale for $29 at thinkgeek and if I order 2 of them, there is a code for 20% off (over 40$). Not bad at 55$ shipped for two of them, IF they actually work.

If they don’t currently work with ST, it looks like you can set up email alerts so I could use spotter–>email–>IFTTT–>ST though I imagine that there would be a bunch of lag

(Todd Wackford) #8

There is work currently being done on this device and you should see something in ST Labs real soon. Like in a week or two kinda soon. :slight_smile:

Twack

(Kevin Tierney) #9

Great to know. Do you think they’ll work better in the ST ecosystem? The reviews I have seen are pretty bad. I wonder how much is based on the Wink app, and how much is the hardware itself

(Andy) #10

Hey @twack or anyone else that is working on these, can you speak to the quality of the sensors in the multi-sensor? Once these are working in ST, are they going to work as well as some of the current compatible sensors? At the price right now these will make a great future addition.

(Todd Wackford) #11

I have not tested them for reliability specifically, but during some short usage runs and integration development I do have a couple of observations.

  1. Battery - While they can run on batteries, I use them plugged in only. They eat batteries. It is a temperature, humidity, vibration, sound and light sensor. So that equals a lot of reporting back to the mother ship in the cloud since one of those attributes is always changing. I would leave batteries in them though, because I wrote the app so that it will report when A/C power is lost. You can use this as AC monitor for things like a freezer or refrigerator (tripped breaker etc.)
  2. Temperature and RH seems to be pretty accurate. Or, at least the two spotters I have are usually within 1 unit of each other on these two attributes.
  3. Pretty good on vibration reporting as well as sound.
  4. One of my spotters will not report light unless I use a flashlight. The other that I just bought a month ago, works perfectly.
  5. Sound and light are within a 1 or a 0. No Decibels or Candle Power (yet). I say yet, because while it reports a 1 or 0 now, the are real number values and not boolean.

    6. Summary: For the price, you can’t beat it. But I would purchase an ST Multi if I “had to” count on the device. If using for convenience and or a novelty, the spotter will do it for you.

(Alex Christensen) #12

I just happened to notice these are on sale at ThinkGeek for $20, code LLAP gives buy one get one half off. If I knew they’d be supported in ST soon I’d be in for 4.

(Re D Da Wg On E) #13

I just ordered a few, lets see how they work!

(Cassidy) #14

Just ordered some from ThinkGeek as well, thanks for the heads up @bazfum!

(Kevin Tierney) #15

Missed the 50% off deal, but found a 10$ off 40 code. So I ordered 2 as well. Will be interesting to see what can be done with them, especially at that price point.

(Andy) #16

I got in last night for 4, I’ll be looking forward to future integrations, for the time I’ll play around to make it work through IFTTT.

(Acastal) #17

Bump. I got a couple of these today. Was wondering if there are any integration updates? The wink app seems odd. On Android I can see the temp sensor etc and on the IOS one I can not? I’ll keep looking and waiting for ST integration.

(Todd Wackford) #18

During yesterday’s developer’s office hours, the ST Peeps said the Spotter and Pivot Power Genius will be released into SmartThings Labs within week(s). I’m putting my money on next week.

When you get yours up and running, please give your feedback here. The Spotter has been taking some hard raps on some of the customer feedback pipes. as I said before, I think the SmartThings integration will actually improve the user’s experience with the device. It would be interesting to find out if others feel the same way.

Twack

(Christopher Masiello) #19

I got one the other day ($20 on ThinkGeek). I don’t have it connected to my SmartThings yet. The Wink app that it uses is crap, but the sensor seems ok. I’m going to use it on my sliding door to monitor open/closing, as well as temperature in the room.

(Kevin Tierney) #20

I ended up returning the 2 I bought. Neither one would connect to my android phone, even after doing a reset on the device. I tried for 2 hours and gave up