These are Zigbee based so should be easy to set up with local control through Home Assistant. Apparently they also act as Zigbee repeaters/extenders.
Unfortunately they are a little bulky.
I picked up a few at the Tempe store where there was lots of stock.
They act as a Zigbee range extender which is what I use them for. The annoying thing apart from being too wide to fit anything else on a double power point is no physical power switch. But $12 is a great price.
Totally agree…..not having an on/off button is a silly design
they are very bulky and dont like to work great with the hue ecosystem which supposedly they should be able to do
You're probably aware, but home assistant will allow you to combine all the different ecosystems. I use these with a sonoff bridge and have no issues. I also use hue devices with that bridge.
The issue is if you want to use the hue dimmer switches natively with it.
@SaddenAscentAspirin - where did you buy sonoff bridge ? is it the zigbee2mqtt ?
It's this one:
https://shop.dialedin.com.au/products/sonoff-zbdongle-p
And yes I use zigbee2mqtt in front of home-assistant.
If only it had energy usage!
The Arlec ones are very much not ZigBee devices
They are not. It is unfortunate the Aqara zigbee switches with power usage are not available anymore. These worked well, although the plugs could be a bit narrow sometimes.
If you just need monitoring of power, the Tuya based wifi ones are quite cheap and easy with local Tuya.
@Commodore64: Grab a Mercator ikuu one (same parent company as arlec?). ZigBee and energy monitoring, wall plug though, not a unit like this.
Id only it had ZigBee!
I had problems with these being killed by resistive loads (e.g. exhaust fans), ended up getting them all returned and going for Meross. That’s not Zigbee either, but I didn’t have an Ikea (or other suitable) bridge at the time!
After using Zigbee I don’t know why anyone would torture themselves with wifi devices. It’s fast, stable and works when your router goes down.
I watched a few yt videos on zigbee vs bt vs wifi and it seems to me like u need some sort of hardware to get the zigbee to work? Is my understanding wrong? Most of my crap is wifi cause i didn’t wanna buy an addition zigbee hardware thingy
Not exactly. You can buy one Zigbee lightbulb, and one motion sensor to control it, for example.
But usually you want some sort of bridge to connect Zigbee to your home network and the internet, and make it easier to manage.
I started with an Amazon Echo controlling a few bulbs, ended up with a Hue bridge controlling all lights in the house, and then Home Assistant.
I am currently experiencing difficulties with displaying current instantenious power draw from a zigbee aliexpress plugs(square boxes/tuya i guess), while tp link wifi successfully exposes current power draw as a sensor.
in zigber plug it sits under diagnostics section, rather than sensors, and i cant access it via the card view for the room. I use mqtt
Wifi is always better for instantaneous power monitoring say for detecting dishwashing cycle.
I have a few of those. It may be under diagnostic but power still has an entity ID you can use to display in different ways on your dashboard. The most simplistic being something like..
type: entities
entities:
- sensor.tv_power_1_power
Yeah,thanks heaps! i am thinking about writing my own config, but it seems bizzare the sensor.plug_power goes to diagnostic section, unless i missed some hidden mqtt setting
@HungryRussian: No that's normal for mqtt. It's just how it's categorises entities on the device screen.
Controls
Sensors
Configuration
Diagnostic.
@djgrazzy: I see. Yeah, i got a separate basic card to display the power draw, but nice’ish type: area cards with pictures wont detect it,since it is not part of "sensor classes"
sensor_classes:
- temperature
- humidity
- power
type: area
i had that issue with zigbee aliexpress ones, it was solved by a firmware update (updated using zigbee2mqtt)
FYI when I bought some last night at the self checkout the discounted price didn't scan (might be because I scanned my Ikea Family card after the products) and I needed to get the staff member there to manually override. If you are self checking out try scanning your Ikea Family card prior to the product to see if the price drops automatically.
These are shit. I've had 4 ones fail after a year or two, one one of my warranty replacements was dead on arrival necessitating another 90 minute round trip to IKEA.
These are huge, blocking the outlet next to them, they don't have a power button on them, they don't default to on upon power cycle, they don't have energy monitoring, and jamming a paperclip into a power outlet to pair it seems like a stupid decision.
Never buying these again
thanks for the heads up, i will stay clear then
What would you recommend instead?
I've had okay success with these square type ones (haven't purchased from this store specifically) https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/256471358951
They aren't perfect either, they say they're rated to 16A but if you use them on a high power load (clothes dryer in my case) they will occasionally turn themselves off as an overcurrent protection feature - which, I'm at least glad is a safety feature built in, even if it doesn't always work lol.
Clipsal wiser is the only other "legit" ZigBee range I've seen in Australia, but at $100 per socket, I will continue to ignore their existence
I purchased the same ones via aliexpress for a around $8 each delivered. Look great, have button for local control and report energy usage.
They’re probably clearing them out for the new smart outlets to come onto the Aus market. Newer, less bulky versions have been sold in Europe for a couple of months now. They also come with physical buttons which is nice.
Thanks, will hold off and see when those come
Thanks OP. Have a few around the house - using a non-Ikea hub and Home Assistant. Have been rock solid - including in internet outages - and it's a great price.
Best use is pre-warming the coffee machine in the morning (and turning it off if no one's downstairs for a long period) and turning on hard to access fans.
Lacking a physical switch is a bit of a pain, but with voice control, HA and cheap switches it's a small gripe for the price.
Do they work with non IKEA out of the box
Yep!
From memory I had to google how to put them in pairing mode (wordless cartoon instructions are not the best here) but took just a few moments and the Ikea lights/outlets work well with a mix of Aliexpress and Ikea switches and sensors. My controller (a Conbee II, running Phoscon/deCONZ on a Raspberry Pi) can also even do Ikea firmware updates in-house.
Thanks OP. They don't look as bulky as the timer plugs I'm currently using.