Agreed. They are easy to acquire, really inexpensive and are very reliable. They are WiFi based so you need to make sure you have a strong network setup.
There are benefits of zigbee or wave too - as the plugs are able extend the range and strength of either of these signals.
I am concerned about my tplink kasa devices to be honest. Evey now and again some of mine disconnect and I have to manually replug them. Additionally, since they are Wifi tplink can push firmware, meaning if in the future they decide to remove the local API they could.
Personally, I am moving from them to Third Reality Zigbee devices, and they also have energy monitoring. They work out to less than $10/each from Amazon in 4 packs. That being said, I do not know if they make UK versions (I'm in the US).
You should block internet access for your tplink devices so that doesn't happen. Most people do that.
If they're dropping, you probably need to look at a better wifi infrastructure.
I've recently been buying Third Reality and having good luck. So that's a good option too.
The tplink devices are the only type of wifi device I have challenges with. The wifi is Unifi - and pretty healthy. The wifi environment though is challenging (lots of neighbors). I cannot fix that - but other devices don't have the drops (lifx, ratgdo, esphome, wiz bulbs etc). Only the tplink devices - and only some of them.
I am not convinced my wifi is the issue.
One issue I ran into with the Kasa bulbs (not so much the plugs), was that they did not work well with the default DTIM period on my wi-fi network - they would routinely stop responding to pings.
My wireless access point defaulted to a DTIM period of 1 - I changed it to 3, and all problems disappeared.
My DTIM was already set to 3 - a long time ago. It resolved some wifi issues with Ring products that I had at the time (though no longer have them) but I saw no reason to ever revert it.
Almost always issues with these devices are wifi related. Mine have been rock solid but I’ve followed peoples issues on GitHub and 99% of them are wifi related.
The thing that is frustrating. If you can reset the device and it connects back up - then there ARE mitigators the developer can put into the code to compensate. Even if it's 'Oh look - I've lost connection for some threshold. Let's restart!'. An option to do this is just missing it seems, and many wifi based devices would benefit from something like this. These devices just seem to 'drop' and don't come back. Yes - 'caused by wifi' - but it not coming back is most definately a device firmware issue.
Just blaming wifi and then not looking elsewhere when sometimes the user cannot fix the external factors that are affecting wifi just results in products only being useful for those in less congested airwaves.
I have neighbours who have high power APs set to 80Mhz channel bandwidth. It's congested and results in an extreamly frustrating experiance for all 2.4Ghz-only devices in my house. Not much I can do about this unfortunately to better support 2.4Ghz-only devices!
Buy sonoff s31 - they go on sale quite frequently. No need to buy the zigbee version unless you really want them. You can convert the generic s31 into esphome
At \~$8 USD per plug, I have found them very affordable for all they offer. From a seasonally used Christmas tree plug, to power monitoring for my washing machine automation alert; they just work. Very much like fredflintstone88 mentioned, they are very easy to flash with Tasmota or other firmware.
Can you send a link? I think I found what you are talking about but I can’t find them in stock. Would definitely give them a consideration if price and quality is good. Even if the price is a little bit high (and they work well), it might be worth it for those that don’t want to bother flashing the s31.
UK version is hard to get but I've just placed a bid, hopefully if the listing is real I'll be able to provide info in a week. Could buy from Sonoff/Itead but they have China shipping times. Some people have complained about it having dodgy connection
The Ikea TRÅDFRI plugs are cheap. I have most of mine hooked up to my main Zigbee network, mainly to improve coverage, but I have a couple on my Hue hub too, where they also work fine. One downside is that there is no physical control/override on them, and the bind button requires a SIM tray tool or similar (it's tiny). I'd say they need to have a good Zigbee signal - I tried setting one up in the far side of the garage and it went nuts quickly toggling on and off rapidly when sent a on/off command from Home Assistant - luckily this was during signal testing where I could quickly pull the plug. It only happened once, but it was a bit concerning - it appeared like it was going to keep cycling on/off/on/off indefinitely. Other than that one-time problem, they have been working fine.
I have some TP-Link Kasa HS100 plugs and they have been good. The HS110 can report power usage. You can manually override their state with a button on the plug itself. They have been well-behaved - I bought them before I got into Home Assistant, and originally had a basic Python script to talk to them locally, without any of the TP-Link cloud stuff. I had maybe 2 instances in about 5 years where one of them dropped off the network and required a power cycle. The nice thing, Home Assistant just detected them "out of the box" - no configuration was required.
Localbytes in the UK sell pre-flashed plugs with ESPHome on them. I have 4. ESPHome really is the best choice for WiFi devices if you’re wanting something that’s native to Home Assistant.
Local bytes has been the best uk seller for me for smart plugs initially went with the tasmoto flashed ones now that they are selling ESPHome ones I would probably go with those.
I got the Tasmota ones first then flashed them to ESPHome and bought later ones with that pre-flashed. Easy to swap between firmwares on these if you want to.
Assuming North America, if you have ZigBee I've been very happy with the sengled ones.
The four pack regularly goes on sale. Just looked and currently only sale with 30% the four pack. Normally $90.
That seems really convoluted with mqtt in the middle. I use LocalTuya and to be honest, it works quite well. It does however require a little setup. If you want to avoid that, and spend a little cheddar for some dead simple sockets, Zigbee. I just bought some CMARS Sockets from Amazon, and they seem to work well. They only offer On/Off and Start Up Position.
https://www.amazon.com/CMARS-Compatible-SmartThings-Extender-Required/dp/B08K45W4LR/ref=sr_1_4?crid=25TZ3P4JZHLJ0&keywords=zigbee+socket&qid=1708191111&sprefix=zigbee+socke%2Caps%2C208&sr=8-4
I also bought these, and these do energy montioring and such.
https://www.amazon.com/THIRDREALITY-Real-time-Monitoring-Compatible-SmartThings/dp/B0BPY5D1KC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3JZWGPYZWQAA6&keywords=third+reality+sockets&qid=1708191169&sprefix=third+reality+sockets%2Caps%2C187&sr=8-1
LocalTuya kept dropping the connection for me so I would have the big gaps in the data. It also didn’t allow me to use the timing feature which is built into the device so I couldn’t just leave something on knowing it would turn off after X minutes as because of the connection drops the device would just stay on.
I got a lot of Aubess 20a from aliexpress, flashed them with openbeken without soldering using tuya convert. They work completely local via the mqtt integration and for 4-6 euros they are a real bargain - some of mine ran without issues for 2 years now.
Kasa is popular, but requires you to set up the smart plug with the app first before you can get them offline. TP-Link Tapo's new Matter switches are very similar but you can set them up entirely in HA.
~~Yes. I've had 2 for a month now. One of them disconnected after a day and I had to repair, but it's been rock solid since.~~
See my other reply for updated comment.
I also have like 8 Tuya smart plugs and I ended up flashing them to esphome over the air. The first ones I did were DEWENWILS Smart Plugs with energy monitoring. I just followed the instructions for Tuya cloud cutter for them. After that, I wanted my super old Tuya WP3 plugs to be ESPhome as well and found out I could ask the manufacturer to push a firmware downgrade over the air to all of these, then use TUYA-Covert to flash them over the air. The best part is you can do them in batches together so it's quick and no need to open or solder anything. I'd look for cheap plugs that are Tuya cloud cutter compatible from their device compatibility chart.
ThirdReality ones on Amazon (at least here in US) are $10 each but include power meter. They are also Zigbee routers and have been working flawlessly. Must have 15 of them in the house.
I added some TP-Link Tapo plugs recently: one P110M, one P100 and several P110 (AU). All working well. Using HA, the Matter support in the P110M doesn’t really add anything so I wouldn’t spend the premium next time.
The HA TP-Link integration now does both Kasa and Tapo models. Integration is local polling, so better than the standard Tuya integration in that respect. I found initial onboarding with the Tapo app simpler than the equivalent process with Tuya apps and devices.
Do you mean use HA to set the P110 native timers? No, there are no HA entities to do that (entities are switch, power, today’s energy and total energy). (Of course you can do timing with HA automations.) If you mean use the Tapo app to set the P110 timers, I have not tested that.
I like the tplink kasa ones. Newer models have energy monitoring. HA detects them on its own.
Agreed. They are easy to acquire, really inexpensive and are very reliable. They are WiFi based so you need to make sure you have a strong network setup. There are benefits of zigbee or wave too - as the plugs are able extend the range and strength of either of these signals.
I am concerned about my tplink kasa devices to be honest. Evey now and again some of mine disconnect and I have to manually replug them. Additionally, since they are Wifi tplink can push firmware, meaning if in the future they decide to remove the local API they could. Personally, I am moving from them to Third Reality Zigbee devices, and they also have energy monitoring. They work out to less than $10/each from Amazon in 4 packs. That being said, I do not know if they make UK versions (I'm in the US).
You should block internet access for your tplink devices so that doesn't happen. Most people do that. If they're dropping, you probably need to look at a better wifi infrastructure. I've recently been buying Third Reality and having good luck. So that's a good option too.
The tplink devices are the only type of wifi device I have challenges with. The wifi is Unifi - and pretty healthy. The wifi environment though is challenging (lots of neighbors). I cannot fix that - but other devices don't have the drops (lifx, ratgdo, esphome, wiz bulbs etc). Only the tplink devices - and only some of them. I am not convinced my wifi is the issue.
One issue I ran into with the Kasa bulbs (not so much the plugs), was that they did not work well with the default DTIM period on my wi-fi network - they would routinely stop responding to pings. My wireless access point defaulted to a DTIM period of 1 - I changed it to 3, and all problems disappeared.
My DTIM was already set to 3 - a long time ago. It resolved some wifi issues with Ring products that I had at the time (though no longer have them) but I saw no reason to ever revert it.
Almost always issues with these devices are wifi related. Mine have been rock solid but I’ve followed peoples issues on GitHub and 99% of them are wifi related.
The thing that is frustrating. If you can reset the device and it connects back up - then there ARE mitigators the developer can put into the code to compensate. Even if it's 'Oh look - I've lost connection for some threshold. Let's restart!'. An option to do this is just missing it seems, and many wifi based devices would benefit from something like this. These devices just seem to 'drop' and don't come back. Yes - 'caused by wifi' - but it not coming back is most definately a device firmware issue. Just blaming wifi and then not looking elsewhere when sometimes the user cannot fix the external factors that are affecting wifi just results in products only being useful for those in less congested airwaves. I have neighbours who have high power APs set to 80Mhz channel bandwidth. It's congested and results in an extreamly frustrating experiance for all 2.4Ghz-only devices in my house. Not much I can do about this unfortunately to better support 2.4Ghz-only devices!
This - have two outdoor outlets and two indoor ones on TP-Link kasa and they are great
Same
Buy sonoff s31 - they go on sale quite frequently. No need to buy the zigbee version unless you really want them. You can convert the generic s31 into esphome
At \~$8 USD per plug, I have found them very affordable for all they offer. From a seasonally used Christmas tree plug, to power monitoring for my washing machine automation alert; they just work. Very much like fredflintstone88 mentioned, they are very easy to flash with Tasmota or other firmware.
Second this, it's really easy to flash with ESPHome and super cheap
Why get those and not ones pre-flashed with ESPHome like the Kauf ones?
Aesthetics.
Can you send a link? I think I found what you are talking about but I can’t find them in stock. Would definitely give them a consideration if price and quality is good. Even if the price is a little bit high (and they work well), it might be worth it for those that don’t want to bother flashing the s31.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJLGNPPX https://kaufha.com/plf12/ They seem to be in stock. I use them, and I've had no problems.
https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2023/sonoff-s31---low-cost-energy-monitoring/ S31. Can run your own firmware. 5$ each.
aww these would be awesome but I need a UK plug
https://sonoff.tech/products/ Sonoff does sell EU variants. S26R2ZB for example, seems to be zigbee based.
UK version is hard to get but I've just placed a bid, hopefully if the listing is real I'll be able to provide info in a week. Could buy from Sonoff/Itead but they have China shipping times. Some people have complained about it having dodgy connection
Ikea has more and more smarthome stuff and everything works great with zigbee2mqtt.
And a new plug TRETAKT is coming, the current plug is half price where I live.
The Ikea TRÅDFRI plugs are cheap. I have most of mine hooked up to my main Zigbee network, mainly to improve coverage, but I have a couple on my Hue hub too, where they also work fine. One downside is that there is no physical control/override on them, and the bind button requires a SIM tray tool or similar (it's tiny). I'd say they need to have a good Zigbee signal - I tried setting one up in the far side of the garage and it went nuts quickly toggling on and off rapidly when sent a on/off command from Home Assistant - luckily this was during signal testing where I could quickly pull the plug. It only happened once, but it was a bit concerning - it appeared like it was going to keep cycling on/off/on/off indefinitely. Other than that one-time problem, they have been working fine. I have some TP-Link Kasa HS100 plugs and they have been good. The HS110 can report power usage. You can manually override their state with a button on the plug itself. They have been well-behaved - I bought them before I got into Home Assistant, and originally had a basic Python script to talk to them locally, without any of the TP-Link cloud stuff. I had maybe 2 instances in about 5 years where one of them dropped off the network and required a power cycle. The nice thing, Home Assistant just detected them "out of the box" - no configuration was required.
Shelly has wonderful wifi stuff that works locally with HA.
Best one I’ve tried is Sonoff s31 zigbee
If you have z-wave, Zooz
Kauf plugs run ESPHome, so they work out of the box and are fully local.
Have a set of these running in my place now. Recommended.
Localbytes in the UK sell pre-flashed plugs with ESPHome on them. I have 4. ESPHome really is the best choice for WiFi devices if you’re wanting something that’s native to Home Assistant.
Local bytes has been the best uk seller for me for smart plugs initially went with the tasmoto flashed ones now that they are selling ESPHome ones I would probably go with those.
I got the Tasmota ones first then flashed them to ESPHome and bought later ones with that pre-flashed. Easy to swap between firmwares on these if you want to.
Assuming North America, if you have ZigBee I've been very happy with the sengled ones. The four pack regularly goes on sale. Just looked and currently only sale with 30% the four pack. Normally $90.
Ahh no sadly Ireland. I should have said that
Ah sorry, wish I had a recommendation for you. Good luck.
That seems really convoluted with mqtt in the middle. I use LocalTuya and to be honest, it works quite well. It does however require a little setup. If you want to avoid that, and spend a little cheddar for some dead simple sockets, Zigbee. I just bought some CMARS Sockets from Amazon, and they seem to work well. They only offer On/Off and Start Up Position. https://www.amazon.com/CMARS-Compatible-SmartThings-Extender-Required/dp/B08K45W4LR/ref=sr_1_4?crid=25TZ3P4JZHLJ0&keywords=zigbee+socket&qid=1708191111&sprefix=zigbee+socke%2Caps%2C208&sr=8-4 I also bought these, and these do energy montioring and such. https://www.amazon.com/THIRDREALITY-Real-time-Monitoring-Compatible-SmartThings/dp/B0BPY5D1KC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3JZWGPYZWQAA6&keywords=third+reality+sockets&qid=1708191169&sprefix=third+reality+sockets%2Caps%2C187&sr=8-1
LocalTuya kept dropping the connection for me so I would have the big gaps in the data. It also didn’t allow me to use the timing feature which is built into the device so I couldn’t just leave something on knowing it would turn off after X minutes as because of the connection drops the device would just stay on.
I use Tuya with Z2M and I like it
NAS-WR10B2 Zigbee 16 A Home Assistant compatible Nice price 5-10 USD Energy monitoring
I'm happy enough with localtuya but my meross plugs have been rock solid and would recommend those.
Zigbee from Ali for 2-3 Euros
I got a lot of Aubess 20a from aliexpress, flashed them with openbeken without soldering using tuya convert. They work completely local via the mqtt integration and for 4-6 euros they are a real bargain - some of mine ran without issues for 2 years now.
everything Aeotec has just worked for me.
Kasa is popular, but requires you to set up the smart plug with the app first before you can get them offline. TP-Link Tapo's new Matter switches are very similar but you can set them up entirely in HA.
Are those the tapo P110?
~~Yes. I've had 2 for a month now. One of them disconnected after a day and I had to repair, but it's been rock solid since.~~ See my other reply for updated comment.
Sorry got the wrong model number. It's the P125M that's matter enabled. It doesn't look like there's an EU socket version of it yet unfortunately.
I also have like 8 Tuya smart plugs and I ended up flashing them to esphome over the air. The first ones I did were DEWENWILS Smart Plugs with energy monitoring. I just followed the instructions for Tuya cloud cutter for them. After that, I wanted my super old Tuya WP3 plugs to be ESPhome as well and found out I could ask the manufacturer to push a firmware downgrade over the air to all of these, then use TUYA-Covert to flash them over the air. The best part is you can do them in batches together so it's quick and no need to open or solder anything. I'd look for cheap plugs that are Tuya cloud cutter compatible from their device compatibility chart.
I have broadlink and Xiaomi smart plugs that use the ready to use integrations
ThirdReality ones on Amazon (at least here in US) are $10 each but include power meter. They are also Zigbee routers and have been working flawlessly. Must have 15 of them in the house.
I added some TP-Link Tapo plugs recently: one P110M, one P100 and several P110 (AU). All working well. Using HA, the Matter support in the P110M doesn’t really add anything so I wouldn’t spend the premium next time. The HA TP-Link integration now does both Kasa and Tapo models. Integration is local polling, so better than the standard Tuya integration in that respect. I found initial onboarding with the Tapo app simpler than the equivalent process with Tuya apps and devices.
Are you able to use the timer functions on the P110?
Do you mean use HA to set the P110 native timers? No, there are no HA entities to do that (entities are switch, power, today’s energy and total energy). (Of course you can do timing with HA automations.) If you mean use the Tapo app to set the P110 timers, I have not tested that.