Wemo Insight WiFi Enabled Smart Plug, with Energy Monitoring, Works with Alexa (Discontinued by Manufacturer - Newer Version Available)

I didnt even try the device, for which I had such high hopes. Belkin appears to have no regard whatsoever to privacy and security. The Android app to control this-- without which the devices are useless-- demands access to ones contact list and-- get this-- your ROUTERS PASSCODE! With this information, Belkin or whoever gets hold of this information (by hacking Belkin? Hacking your phone?), can then access your LAN behind its firewall, and/or SPAM everyone in your contact list. It also demands your Device & app history, so they know ALL your apps, your identiy, your location, access to your phone, your photos, your media files, your camer(!?!?!?), and more. Seriously? Belkin employees could surreptitiously access your phone and eavesdrop on your private conversations or watch you as you do private things, as well as send this info to everyone in your contact list. While I dont doubt that this is not their intentions, there is NO JUSTIFIABLE REASON for such privacy invasion, because a rogue employee could wreak havoc with ones life if appropriate information was disseminated. I know that younger people seem to not understand the consequences of privacy loss or identity theft, so they readily accept such access demands from the apps they enjoy, but I certainly will not, and I recommend everyone else reading this takes a similar stand. iOS devices allow individual blocking of an apps permissions, but Android does not-- its an all/nothing deal. Until enough Android users complain, Android systems will lack this individual feature control. And, while Belkin may give reasons like we need your access list IN CASE you want to share settings with friends, or other sanitized reasons, there is NO VALID REASON to demand access to your personal data like that. So, I am sadly sending these back. It could have been a great product but I will never know, because I refuse unnecessary invasions of my privacy. I have similarly uninstalled any app that makes unreasonable demands. Many want access to ones contact list, so they can sell the data to telemarketers or spam your friends themselves. I will not participate in this. FIGHT BACK! There are other apps/products that allow remote control via the Internet, that do NOT ask for ANY special permissions. Shame on Belkin!

I bought the WEMO Insight about a month ago, installed it (it took a few minutes for the device to be recognized by my router) , and made a few power measurements with it. This was fun and informative. The list of features is impressive, since you can use it as a timer, a rule-based controller, a device to alert you when something happens to the power system, for power measurements, and more. What is problematic with the device is its frequent lock ups and inability to be recognized by my wireless router (one of the latest Netgear products) when further away than 20 feet (on the same floor of the building), while my laptops work flawlessly off the Wifi network in the whole house. A few weeks ago I came home to see the devices powered by the WEMO switched off with no warning on my WEMO app. What if it had been my refrigerator or some other vital appliance? This, and the too frequent software updates that take minutes to complete make the WEMO almost useless, because I bet if you really need it, say in a remote location you want to control and/or monitor, it will freeze up and will need some sort of hardware reset. It is unfortunate that green energy enthusiasts who want to do something intelligent and useful with a device like this get frustrated by a device that needs endless troubleshooting and coaching just to work as expected. Nobody would buy a refrigerator that shuts down every two weeks and needs some procedure to get going again, but apparently in the high-tech world we are expected to spend our free time tinkering with all sorts of half baked pseudo solutions. In conclusion, I think the WEMO Insight is a nice idea that suffers from bad execution.

The switch functions well manually or from the smartphone app. My problems started when I started to rely on the power consumption calculations. I suspected something was incorrect so I measured the power with two different power meters (scientific quality) to confirm the WeMo was wrong. For example at my machines idle (100 W) WeMo was reading 25 watts too high or 125 W. At full power my machine was reading 704 W and WeMo said 849 W. I also confirmed that my other two WeMo has very similar power calculation inaccuracies. So buyer be warned the the power calculations are consumer friendly but not accurate enough to be of any real value. This product was designed for the average Joe/Jane and not some one who needs accurate power consumption measurements. If you only want a switch that is operated by your smart phone then this is your product, otherwise keep looking.....

IT TURNS ITSELF ON RANDOMLY. How could that *possibly* be acceptable in a product that controls electric power? I have it hooked up to a couple of track lights -- 200 watts in total. No rules or anything -- just wanted to be able to control the lights with my Amazon Echo, which can talk to the WeMo. I went away on a three-week vacation and the cable internet went down in my apartment shortly after I left. I came home to find the lights on -- turns out the WeMo had turned them on and left them burning the whole three weeks. (It had nothing to do with the Echo, which wasnt even plugged in at the time.) The WeMo conveniently tracks how long its on and how many KWH have been used, so I could see that $20 or more of electricity was down the drain. Initially I thought it might have something to do with losing internet connectivity -- not that that would have been acceptable in any way -- but since then Ive discovered that the WeMo randomly turns on *for no reason at all.* It was doing it every few days in recent weeks -- extremely annoying, and I should have just taken it and thrown it in the trash, but instead I looked up wemo turns on randomly, found lots of other people with the same problem, and tried some of the suggestions others had, e.g. resetting it, moving it further away and closer to the WiFi access point, et cetera, ad nauseam. I even tried disconnecting the network for a few days, but the WeMo still turned itself on, proving beyond a doubt that the problem was within the switch itself (i.e. with the network disconnected no one could be sending rogue commands to turn it on or off). For a while I thought Id solved the issue by moving the switch to a different outlet, so I made the mistake of leaving the WeMo plugged in. Unfortunately I got called away from home and havent been able to go home for a week. Im currently sitting here, 200 miles away, watching on my surveillance camera as the WeMo goes ABSOLUTELY BONKERS. It turns on randomly every few minutes if I do nothing. Sometimes it turns itself off. Sometimes I try turning it off remotely with the WeMo app and it turns on, then off, then on again, then off again, then on again in a rapid cycle. No matter what I do, it always ends up on most of the time. There seems to be NO WAY for me to fix this or disable it -- I am stuck watching helplessly as the lights go on no matter what I do. The neighbors must think Ive gone crazy, with my lights flashing randomly and burning all night long. Thank God its only the lights. I had some silly notion of hooking up a WeMo to my window air conditioner (would be nice to turn on the AC an hour before I get home on a sweltering day) but I cant imagine how screwed Id be now if I had done that. The WeMo is a thoroughly untrustworthy, even dangerous piece of junk (imagine the problems that could be caused by a switch that randomly turns itself on or off) and Belkin is irresponsible to continue selling it.

I purchased 3 in Nov 2015, installed them in Jan 2016 and loved them! But then in March one of my three died...nothing out of ordinary use, bedroom lamp, low wattage, no electrical spikes, just died one day. I tried it in other outlets, over several days but I guess it is just dead. That is 33% defect rate and I manufacture products for a living so I just think this is not acceptable. I downloaded the pdf (3 pages) on filing a claim and to be honest I am going to file the claim, and I will update my review and let you now how it goes. Personally, I rarely file a claim, I just stop buying from the manufacturer but since I have two other wemos I am just pissed off enough to go through the process and pain of filing a claim. Follow up #1: I called 1-866-515-2054, after two minutes of punching in #s got a live person and Rachael listened to my 2 min summery, put me on hold for 4 minutes to talk to technicican who approved my exchange, and then she emailed me RA # and talked me through the process while I filled it out on line. Finished the call after 14 minutes. They require that I pay for shipping (to return the product), but they will ship me out a free replacement. So all in all not too painful, but it still will cost me both time and shipping back to them to get a replacment I DID NOT BREAK, they had defective parts that did not last the expected life cycle of the product. I am hoping they will at least include a 50% off coupon as compensation for my frustration, time and shipping costs...

The good: Works exactly as advertised. I have my printer plugged into it and can start the printer with my Amazon echo by saying Alexa turn on printer without getting up from my desk. I had hoped to use it with my coffee maker but it turns out that the coffee machine must have the button pressed after power is applied. Not the Wemos fault. The manual for my Mr. Coffee says this is a safety feature The bad: A couple of setup issues: I had a 63 character complex password on my home network but the Insight could not handle that. I had to shorten it to 39 characters to get it to work. I also use MAC filtering. The label on the Insight had the incorrect MAC address. After temporarily disabling MAC filtering, connecting to my wifi and discovering the correct MAC address I was able to update the MAC address list and everything works fine. I have to say that the folks at Belkin were very responsive and I was able to fix these issues quickly. Might be a bit much for a non-technical person though. On balance I like the Insight now that it is working and am considering a Wemo light switch for my den. Recommended for those with enough technical knowledge to work through any glitches or at least access to someone who can help.

There are some things that are excellent about this product -- once the setup is complete -- its really easy to hookup numerous iphones/ipads/itouches to register the wemo app (allowing you to control the outlet). The cons include not receiving notifications that the outlet is on/off, unless you separately set the usage/watts on EACH itouch/iphone/ipad product. Im pretty sure that this is only due to the fact that I have an extremely low-power consuming miniature toy pump that Im using on this outlet. Initial setting is somewhere around 8 (?) watts or something. I received zero notification that the pump was on/off. Once I adjusted the watts? to below 2, it started notifying me that the outlet was being used. I do believe that theres an automatic watt/power detection during the setup process -- but since the device wanted to update the firmware ? while I was initially setting this up -- I did not want to bother myself doing the automatic power detection setup step. Now, the good news is that notwithstanding all of this -- its always, without failed, allowed me to turn the device on/off. OH! And even if your main cable is down (no internet, no cable, no TV), as long as the router is physically working, it seems like the Wemo device works. I read somewhere that it creates is own wifi network (or something) so maybe our cable companys wifi system doesnt even have to be on -- not sure -- but at least it works even if the cable/internet/wifi is down.

Ive had the original switches for about a year and now the insights. The app software is getting better and that is the real issue. When they connect I have no problems using them. The smaller size and usage info of the insight is a real plus. As the software improves, I expect connectivity to the app to get better. I can see all of my wemo (5) on my network all the time, its just whether the app will. Sometimes my phone sees them all, sometimes my tablet, its still a guessing game. Belkin is making the app better, so Ill keep using them. I only wish there was a way to control through my PC. My using Wi-Fi, they are easy to setup and configure.

I purchased a selection of these WeMo products to try them out, including the Insight switch, normal switch, motion and wall switch. I also noticed that the last review was a year old, so let me update things a little. First, let me calibrate my point of view: Home automation is like cell phones before the iPhone - crappy industrial design, abysmal user interface/experience/configuration - zero integration of devices and software. Some have tried with home hubs but this is itself an arcane and user unfriendly concept. Into this environment, WeMo today brings a true breath of fresh air. The products are clean designs, work as expected, are packaged and presented clearly so anyone can get them to work. As close to zero configuration as possible. Help is right up front. The applications are only limited by our imaginations, and I look forward to hearing about creative applications. We all know that The Internet of things is the next big wave. The question is, who will lead this wave? I would submit that the model Apple has set - making products truly useful for ordinary people - is the key indicator of future success. In this, WeMo has made a great start and deserves to be recognized. But of course, we are only at the beginning. From my experience with WeMo so far, the things part is working pretty well. Bugs are to be expected. The real question is how fast they are noticed and corrected. The frequent firmware updates speak of a dynamic and energetic development effort. That is a good thing. Software and apps are the next frontier. Of course there is lots of hardware and software yet to be developed - I would like to be able to build an energy profile of my entire home and all the appliances, for example - oh and integrate with (or better yet, provide) my security system. As a consumer, what I need is a company who shares the vision and provides the hardware and software - including access by third party apps - to make it happen. WeMo? Quite possible.

WeMo has been my solution to Christmas lights this year. Let me start by saying I had a lot of trouble setting the WeMo Insight Switch up on my wireless network at home. In the app, setup wasnt particularly intuitive to me. It might have been that I was tired or overcomplicating it in my head, but the app seemed almost too simple. The confusion came from the fact that I had to launch the app, read through the steps of what to do, close the app, perform the steps, and relaunch the app. On Android, at least, there was no way to set up a WeMo Insight Switch without closing the app, and re-launching it--a bit clumsy in my opinion. In hindsight, I know now that all I really need to do is connect to a wifi network the WeMo puts out (youll know it when you see it, or you can look on the physical device for the SSID name). When you do that, you launch the app which then prompts you to set the WeMo up with an existing wireless network. Then it restarts and attempts to connect to the wifi network youve just configured. In my case, this was a terrible experience because I found out my router may be incompatible with the WeMo. After configuring the WeMo with my home network information, it attempted to restart but failed repeatedly. When I contacted Belkin support, they didnt ask me for any information about my router, and were quite dismissive of the problem. It happened to work at one point during our contact, and they rushed me off as if everything was solved. It promptly disconnected from my network and I decided to continue troubleshooting on my own. The only way I figured out that my router was an issue is because Ive had similar issues with my Nest Thermostat with this router--I set up a second router as an access point with a second network just for these other devices. When I switched my WeMo to this access point, it worked smoothly. Overall, it mostly does what youd expect it to do. You can turn the switch on and off remotely from your phone. After your devices app has seen the WeMo switch and its configuration, it will remember the configuration even if you change networks. This is good for if you leave home and are not on wifi, or if, like me, you have multiple wireless networks at home. One problem with this is that if Im not connected directly to the same wifi network the WeMo is connected to, there is sometimes a very, very long delay before the WeMo responds to my input. The Android app is fairly bad at this point. Its menus are not organized well, its pretty slow and unresponsive, and setting up rules is not laid out well. There is definitely a lot of room for Belkin to make improvements to the app. Overall, I would like to recommend this product, but given the poor tech support I received, I cant say I would expect them to solve this problem for me, and I definitely dont expect the average user to know how to troubleshoot something like this if they hadnt run into it before. When I found the same issue with Nest, for instance, I was able to find my router listed in a set of models that might not be compatible. At the time I installed the WeMo, no such document existed from Belkin. Admittedly, the core technological issue is the fault of my router, not Belkin. Id like to not hold that against Belkin, but the reality of the situation is that anyone could have my router (its a fairly popular Netgear model from a few years ago--WNDR3700/N600) and might run into similar problems, and Belkin support should not give up so quickly, be so dismissive, or be so unprepared in general for issues like this. For me, its a pretty decent product. But I dont think I would recommend this for the typical user (someone who doesnt have multiple routers lying around the house not in use and available for troubleshooting purposes).