So I’ve been looking for (European) smart plugs for a while now and what I’ve noticed is either the lack of support in Homey or the price being very high.
These days its easy to get some Tapo or Nedis plugs but they often have the same issue: they don’t really play nice with Homey. Either there is a normal integration (like Tapo) but somehow power metering is missing from automations. Or Nedis where they aren’t really supported for Homey. There’s a few similar that need Tuya to work, but right now Tuya integration doesn’t work and thus the plug is useless. There’s a Tuya workaround but its not easy and also likely to break (and for me it didn’t work). Also there’s quite a few that don’t do max amperage to support a washing machine or something like that.
So can folks recommend me some affordable smart plugs that work well with Homey, either directly or a good integration that will still work in the long run? I hate to buy something that ends up not working or breaking down the line. There’s plenty smart plugs out there, but most of the affordable ones are Tuya rebrands and the rest is either not supported at all or very pricey. Would be nice to automate some stuff where a plug costs max 15 bucks each instead of the 40/50 bucks I see from those that do work.
Most of those in that topic don’t work anymore (Tuya nonsense) or are still pretty expensive. Or they simply don’t do energy measurements or don’t do 16 or 20 amps like one would expect in order to support a washing machine or something. And lets not forget that a lot of them send all your data to China or some database where you can’t delete your data from.
Another Tuya ZigBee plug. Not really fond of those. Though I’m guessing the zigbee variant is easier to get working. 30 seconds for energy updates is a bit slow indeed, but still enough for at least a few flows.
You assume Tuya is one app. It’s not. Tuya wifi devices are supported by Tuya Cloud community app;
Tuya Zigbee devices are supported by the, yes, Tuya zigbee app
Nedis = Tuya whitelabel btw
I do not recommend Tuya (whitelabel) devices though.
But, I use Tuya stuff for 4 years now, most of it still works fine.
Only the smart plugs started oscillating after a few years, so I binned those right away.
Yeah and a lot of Tuya non-zigbee ones are out there that don’t work anymore since the Tuya Cloud or Tuya Homey apps are currently broken. The cloud also has an annoyance where it relies on a developer account that you need to reload API keys every 6 months and is likely to become a paid solution as well.
About that link:
5 out of 12 are low amperage, so we can skip those. We also skip those without power monitoring, another 2 gone. Of the rest, most are still very expensive a piece. So anything over 30 bucks can be removed too, which leaves the Ikea one (of which the energy usage one is still unavailable where I live) and innr (sold out everywhere). So yeah, not a lot of luck with the plugs from that blogpost. Which is kind of why I started the topic. Either stuff is outdated, no longer as cheap (since prices went up) or not in stock. And for a lot there are reviews that state their power monitoring isn’t reliable. Or not enough to do automations on. For example: getting notified when your washing machine has stopped or put lights on when you power on a pc.
I also thought it’s a tuya device/app (well probably still might be) but when I linked it to Homey which worked fast like every device I suggested I use the app “Nous”
But since its zigbee there shouldn’t be a link to China is it?
I am a fan of Frient devices and their Smart Plug is extremely reliable. You can find it under 30 euros in discounts. It’s not 15 euros what you asked for, but I guess you have to pay a bit for reliability…
For light duty I’ve had great experiences with Third Reality smart plugs. Theses are Zigbee with volts / amps / power monitor plugs. They are about $10 each, or about $35 for box of 4.
If you need higher power like for appliances the Zooz power switch plug. These are zwave with power monitoring. For around $35.
Yeah, they haven’t been in store in the Netherlands at all. I’ve been waiting for those for a while now but I really want to start automating. And since they are so low on stock it also doesn’t look well for support and replacements…
I was wondering all the time why no one would mention Shelly devices. They work very reliably for me, both WiFi and Bluetooth. You use them locally without a manufacturer’s cloud so that’s also a positive thing.
Regarding plugs you will unfortunately get only a device rated for max 2500W. So you need to consider to install a PM switch into your outlet from them to have higher rating up to 3650W, which also works like a charm for me (both washing machine and tumble dryer).
A new generation of devices is upcoming which will also bring ZigBee.
And last but not least they are all affordable products
