Well, judging from the number of dated posts about how wemo integration is craptastic at best. I thought I’d share some thoughts about connecting Wemo light switches with smarthings, hopefully it can help some people out there from tearing their hair out. I’ve had some luck with a lot of trial an error, so hopefully this post can help some people out there.
A little bit of background, I’m located in Asia with 220v, not 110. I’m also using a US based V2 Hub, primarily because it’s cheaper and faster to get stuff from Amazon US, and not the UK. Also there are more Zwave devices for the US market than the UK market.
Btw - US Wemo light swtiches do work on 220v without much problem. Although it is not stated.
First things first, I did a complete renovation of an old apartment, thus I was able to add in a live neutral for the Wemo on the sockets. So I set out installing a few at a time on essential switches a couple of months ago.
They were unstable from day 1- but they are getting better with some tweaks.
Here is some tips for integrating wemo’s to your current setup for better stability.
- Wifi Network
Static IP’s for wemo’s is a MUST. If you have more than one router or access point take note, connecting the swtiches to an ap that is on a wireless repeater will not work! It will really mess things up. Be sure all your AP’s are on a wired connection, using the same SSID name. If in doubt, make EVERYTHING that connects static.
If you are running multiple AP’s, set the SSID’s that the wemo’s connect to on non overlapping channels from each other This improves stability greatly.
Leave UPNP on, and don’t use the roaming feature on your router if you have it.
- Essential Apps.
Wemo Manager for Android. - This was crucial for me as I needed 2 way / 3 way light switches, that I could not achieve on a Zwave setup (most were 110v)- I’;ve used the rule’s on the app to give me almost instantaneous 2 / 3 way functionality. This is running 24/7 on an android device.
*I experimented with a virtual 2 way setup on some cheap zwave switchs that could handle 220v- it did not work ideally. There was a minimum delay of 30s up to 10 minutes. This variable was not acceptable. Plus I could not find a workaround to increase the speed of the switches communicating with the hub and with each other.
Pollster- I’m not sure if this is still working, but I have it on my account on “refresh” every 8 minutes.
- Optional Apps
Tasker / Sharptools. - I’ve use this integration with the intents from Wemo manager to make the Wemo’s control virtual Switches (that control Hue Bulbs / scenes and colours) that are connected to the wemo switches.
The delay to trigger a colour change from a physical press from a wemo switch (going through wemo manager-intent-tasker-sharptools virtual on/off switch) is about 3-4 seconds, which is acceptable.
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Alexa Compatibly - Don’t double link your wemo’s via smarthings and via alexa. Keep them separate which I link , outside of smarthings. It’s just faster. It’s also easier to group. Like in all smartapps and devices - multiple redundancies help in stability.
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Further Tweaks-
I’ll be seeing if I can increase the reliablility of on / off state awareness using the same tasker/ sharptools intent- where a physical press on / off -will also make sharptools turn on the wemo switch. (redundancy seems to be the key in getting a stable system)
This is everything I learned so far in tweaking the wemo’s, I have 30 wemo switches and devices- that have been stable (finally) for the last few days.
This setup sorta works for me, and the choice of swtiches available was very limited due to voltage and function compatible devices.