It is that time of year when we bring trees indoors, which then sprout lights and hide wall sockets out of reach. Not only does it get tricky to get to the socket to turn things on and off, but it also intrigues me to know how much extra power the festive decorations are using.
So I had a quick look around for the options for smart power switching. Ideally I'd like to replace the wall sockets themselves with smart versions. There are a couple of options here, Den (which is due to launch in early 2018) and Energenie. The downside to these are the lack of power monitoring, and unavailability in the case of Den.
There are far more options available for smart plugs, even with power monitoring built in. There's the TP-Link Wi-Fi Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring, the Belkin WeMo Insight Switch, the Energenie Smart Plug+, the Elgato Eve Energy, the Efergy Ego Smart WiFi Socket, to name a few. Some connect directly to your WiFi, some connect to a home automation hub, and almost all work with Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. The exception is the Elgato Eve Energy, which is Bluetooth connected and only works with Apple/Siri/iOS devices. There's not that much differentiation between each product, except on price where the TP-Link is the cheapest at £29.99 and the Belkin the most expensive at £49.99. I bought the TP-Link HS110,
So I had a quick look around for the options for smart power switching. Ideally I'd like to replace the wall sockets themselves with smart versions. There are a couple of options here, Den (which is due to launch in early 2018) and Energenie. The downside to these are the lack of power monitoring, and unavailability in the case of Den.
There are far more options available for smart plugs, even with power monitoring built in. There's the TP-Link Wi-Fi Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring, the Belkin WeMo Insight Switch, the Energenie Smart Plug+, the Elgato Eve Energy, the Efergy Ego Smart WiFi Socket, to name a few. Some connect directly to your WiFi, some connect to a home automation hub, and almost all work with Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. The exception is the Elgato Eve Energy, which is Bluetooth connected and only works with Apple/Siri/iOS devices. There's not that much differentiation between each product, except on price where the TP-Link is the cheapest at £29.99 and the Belkin the most expensive at £49.99. I bought the TP-Link HS110,
which has a prodigious and unnecessary amount of packaging. It certainly doesn't need a plastic insert inside a cardboard inner box, inside a cardboard outer box.
Setting it up is pretty easy, just plug it in and let it initialise itself (flashing orange light). As with all smart home systems there's a cloud backend to keep tabs on your devices and enable remote control. You need to download the Kasa for Mobile app from your respective app store, which gives you the option to create a new account with the TP-Link Cloud.
Right now the web interface to TP-Link Cloud is only focused on their video cameras, so you can log in using the account credentials you supplied to Kasa, but the web interface just reports that "no camera exists in this account". Maybe in the future the web interface will encompass all of TP-Link's smart devices.
Back in the Kasa app you'll need to add a new device. To do this the app disconnects your phone from your WiFi, and scans for the HS110 which has set up it's own WiFi hot spot. Once detected you can set up the WiFi the HS110 ought to connect to, and configure a friendly name and icon for it. When all is done the HS110 displays a solid green light, which is mimicked in the Kasa app.
I am quite impressed with the lack of latency between switching on the app and the HS110 responding, it is as immediate as you really need. And if you can actually reach the HS110, you can turn it on and off via a button on the front of it.
Enabling voice control with Amazon's Alex was pretty straight forward. First use the Alexa app to enable the TP-Link Kasa skill, then go into the Smart Home section and Add Device. Alexa and Kasa integrate at their respective backend clouds, so the Alexa app will take you to the TP-Link Cloud to authorise that integration. Then you can simply say "Alexa, turn on Christmas Tree".
For Google's Assistant the process is the same, but the order of the steps is slightly different. Instead of enabling a skill then adding a device, in the Google Home app you go to Home Control and add a device, then scroll down the list of integrations under Add New to find TP-Link Kasa. The Google Home app will again take you to the TP-Link Cloud to authorise the integration, before finally getting you to allocate the HS110 to a Room.
With both Alexa and Assistant the delay between the spoken command and the tree lights switching on and off is pretty small. Not quite as immediate as using the Kasa app, but certainly quicker than getting up off the sofa, crossing the room, fighting through the tree, and switching the lights off at the plug.
