I’ve been using these plugs for about two months now, and I have 11 of them installed around my house. Given the limited availability of Zigbee (and Z-Wave) power plugs in Australia and New Zealand compared to Europe, I wanted to share my experience with these SmartHome plugs. Just to clarify, I am NOT affiliated with SmartHome in any way.
What I Like:
Compact Design: It’s the narrowest plug I’ve found for our market, allowing two to fit side by side on a horizontal double power point.
Excellent Range: I could pair them with Homey from quite a distance, even with walls in between.
Great Zigbee Repeater: These plugs are the only ones that have worked well with my Aqara battery-powered sensors. I replaced my IKEA repeaters and Frient smart cables with these. While I previously faced issues with Aqara sensors stopping their response, these plugs solved that problem for me (your experience may vary).
Accurate Energy Monitoring: They report energy, power, current, and voltage. The energy reporting is very accurate unlike some generic Zigbee plugs I’ve used before. (I think there are many topics in the forum discussing this issue.)
Affordable: These are perhaps the cheapest Zigbee plugs with power monitoring you can buy in Australia.
Drawbacks:
On most power points, these plugs cover the switch button as you can see on the picture above (for those outside of Australia, all power points here have switches). Additionally, if you place two units side by side, the power button on the right unit becomes inaccessible as it sits sideways. This can be inconvenient if you want to operate the plug manually.
A few months ago, someone asked for a solution HERE
Mods, if you feel this post should be merged, please feel free to do so.
As a fellow Aussie, I like these at this price. I do though, find it unfair that most of the good smart Home products don’t come to Australia. What products in various categories do you recommend? Yes, Homey’s Best Buy guides are nice, but most products aren’t available Down Under.
It’s not unfair it’s just the market size. Simple maths has it that population of NZ plus Aus make up just over 30 mil people. Europe alone is over 700mil people. So these devices producers look at that.
Z-wave, different frequency than the rest of the world, Zigbee plugs also different since the three weird prongs Australia has gone for. Zigbee wall switches you can buy them but unless they are electrically approved you risk insurance not to pay you anything if touch wood there is a fire. All other Zigbee battery powered are fine, all WiFi devices are also fine.
But overall, you can still automate your home, maybe at a premium price than Europeans would do.
Personally, never used that “Best buy” by Athom. I just search what I need, then I check if there is an app for it and if yes, then certainly works with Homey. And so far I have just about all, except gas and water meters.
Hi @danone | Dan , this is probably a long-shot but I’m wondering if you’ve had any experience / joy with external / outdoor / waterproof, etc., power points that work with Homey Pro?
I’ve been through quite a few posts here but can’t find anything that looks sensible and is available in Aus; I’m in Victoria, fyi.
Any thoughts? Cheers, Gray.
Hi Gray, @GrayV8
No, I haven’t. I have one of those Smarthome zigbee plugs fitted into an outdoor PowerPoint but that’s under a canopy so rain would not reach it.
However, I know that Mercator has got an outdoor zigbee PowerPoint with power monitoring. This includes into Honey as generic zigbee device but it should work fine including power monitoring.
You can buy them from various outlets and online such as this one here: https://www.australianlightingandfans.com.au/mercator-ikuu-smart-external-double-power-point-ip54-zigbee.html
Thanks for the reply @danone . Yes I did in fact see the mercator ZB device, but I’m not entirely sure it’s a good path to go down.
Reading through ALL of this has put me off somewhat: Mercator Ikuu Zigbee App - #67 by Craig_Allen
I just re-read your comment “This includes into Honey as generic zigbee device” - are you sure of this, given the lengthy details in the thread above for the app/driver…?
Either way, I was really hoping there would be a simple plug-in type unit (to the existing outdoor waterproof sockets I already have) which would look like one of the indoor ones but be safe outside. Probably I’m just a bit naive of the difficulties with how this might be designed & implemented.
