Amazon Smart Plug, for home automation, Works with Alexa - A Certified for Humans Device

I got these to control the Christmas lights. The design of the plug is terrible. It doesnt fit in any outdoor receptacle so you have to plug in an extension cord, puta your plug into that, then put an extension cord into the smart plug. I tried scanning the bar codes several times to pair with the Alexa, but the dialog box is splashed across the screen, blocking the target for the camera. You have to guess where to place your phone above the barcode. Then, when you KNOW you have it placed right, it says that it doesnt see it. I threw the phone down in disgust and walked away. When I came back, all of the sudden the plug was there! The programs allow you to choose Turn on one hour before sunset and Turn off at 10 pm all good, right? Nope. I tried, repeatedly, to combine them in a routine over two days. I gave up. I started to manually turn them on with my phone. Then, magically, as before, they suddenly seemed to work. I am a scientist who has to deal with weird non-intuitive software routines to run instruments all the time. If I didnt already have Alexa dots for free with my Sirius subscription, I would have chosen another platform. PS Alexa doesnt know anything so it is a complete waste of time to ask anything except the weather.

Alexa does all the work..

goodd product

A friend suggested these plugs and I have them in every room of the house now! It’s so easy to turn on and off groups of lights. I can’t believe I lived without them for so long!

This plug can be a pain to setup. I have purchased two of these plugs and here is my experience with each of them. First Plug This plug is used to control a lamp that has an on/off switch that semi-broke when a labrador retriever tipped the lamp over. The switch still works, but you have to turn it just right or the knob comes off completely. So we left it in the on position permanently and we used to manually plug/unplug the lamp when we needed extra light. Amazon often runs promotions for these plugs so I think we picked this up on Prime Day or Black Friday. This plug for some reason I couldnt scan the QR code and had to manually setup. Once setup, it worked fine with Alexa controlling it as a light. We renamed it to light from first light so we could just say Alexa, turn on the light or Alexa, turn off the light. It was setup so long ago I have no idea how it got grouped into lights. Our lamp doesnt have a smart bulb. Second Plug This plug is also used to control an on/off switch. This plug was a major pain to setup. I tried both the QR code and manual setup. Sometimes it would connect to my wifi and sometimes it would not. If it setup, I couldnt turn it off or on using Alexa app for android for a quick test (my Alexa speaker isnt nearby). If the setup timed out, I would get various errors on not being able to see the plug or not being able to connect to wifi. Finally, I figured out the plug was flaky because of the distance from my wifi router. I happened to have a Netgear EX2700 (2.4Ghz only) laying around because my wife used to need it for an old Lenovo Yoga when she was in college. I setup the wifi extender again (after a factory reset as it was setup for an old password) about half way between my router and the Amazon plug. This time the QR code scanning worked. I used the same password for my network name plus _EXT on the end. I think the Amazon smart plug must have tried this network with the strongest signal and the saved password because I didnt have to pick the network and retype my password after I previously chose to save it. Finally, I could control the lamp from my phone which this time was grouped among my smart plugs. I renamed Second Plug to Piano Light and it was good to go. One thing the Alexa app cant tell you is the signal strength and reliability of your WiFi network. It might show it briefly when choosing the network (signal strength), but it would be nice to see it constantly displayed within the app when showing the network your plug is on. This way if youre going into your device list settings to see whats wrong with the device it might show a flaky signal which would explain why you cant control the plug with your voice or the Alexa app. It doesnt have to constantly show this signal, only when you open device settings. I can understand the limitation of the wifi radio they can put into these plugs and thus the need for extenders if you get far enough from your router. I am using a NETGEAR R6700 Nighthawk AC1750 Dual Band Smart WiFi Router, Gigabit Ethernet (R6700) also bought from Amazon.

This purchase was an impulse buy, actually. It was on sale, and I thought - why not? I have several uplights that are under and behind furniture and its a literal pain to hand plug-in and un-plug several times a day. Im really tired of crawling around trying to reach the plugs, and wow - with a simple command I can light up my living room, or with a tap on my Alexa app I can turn on or off specific lights depending on the time of day. I had no idea how much of a difference it would make not having to deal with all the plugging/unplugging. I cant believe I never thought to buy these before. Im getting older and its just not that easy (or fun) to climb on or under the furniture anymore. :-D Setup was very simple and I control mine via Alexa through my Bose 700 soundbar. I plan on purchasing a few more for the upstairs so I can turn on the lights on and off when i get up to go to work at 5:30 in the morning - no more tripping over stuff in the dark. Never had an issue and my only regret was not buying them sooner - could have saved a few scraped hands and bumped heads for sure! Very happy with this very simple purchase.

I love it. I use it to control my fan so I don’t have to get up to turn it on when it gets to hot.

Makes turning stuff on and off so easy. I figured it was going to make me a little lazy and it might have, but I can walk into the room with my hands full and just say turn on the light. And can turn the light on or off from the app. Love it!