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

These arent the most reliable or stable things in the world but they get the job done. The cool thing about wemo switches is being able to set up all sorts of cool rules and have them interoperate with other online services and stuff. I use a wemo insight to give me a push notification when my electric bike is done charging which is super useful. I use a wemo insight and IFTTT to turn on and off my dehumidifier according to the humidity measured by my netatmo internet connected weather station, then it tracks usage and sends me monthly reports and even send me an alert if the daily cost of dehumidification rises over a certain level. These things are great but you have to think about creative ways to use them to really get the full value out of them. I would recommend always spending the extra money to get the insight because its not that much more expensive but its way more useful to set up interesting behaviors.

I put my christmas lights on the switch and loved knowing they would turn on and off without having to contort my body and squeeze behind the tree hoping I didnt break anything to get to the outlet twice a night. I set up a program on the app to turn them on at dark and off at midnight. Since then, Ive put a lamp on a wemo switch and have it said to away mode- the lamp randomly turns on and off from dark until midnight for random amounts of time. Im not home a lot and this does a great job making it look like someone is at my house. Only reason for 4 stars instead of 5 is they do go offline from time to time.

I already owned a WeMo Switch, so I was excited to try the new power monitoring feature of the Insight. The WeMo app is somewhat easy to use, but it has limited functionality. Itll get the job done, but I hope Belkin is working on updates from feedback on the WeMoThat community. You can set up some basic turn on/off instructions, but more options are available when using the IFTTT (If This Then That) website. A few specs on the Insight: max power connected = 1800W and it uses 1.5W when off/in standby. You can turn a device plugged into it using the button on top or with the app. The set-up was easy and exactly like the Switch. The package only came with install instructions and the Insight. The WeMo app for Android also has a set-up guide that walks you through the process. I did not have any issues. The hardest part is knowing how to view different WiFi networks on your phone. Id recommend the following for set-up: 1. Plug-in the WeMo (Insight) Switch so it can start the boot-up process (1-2 minutes) 2. Download the WeMo app & open it 3. On the upper right corner are three stacked dots. Touch them and choose Setup Instructions 4. Follow the pretty pictures. 5. Once the (Insight) Switch finishes booting, go to the WiFi networks on your phone & select the WiFi network that the device creates. WARNING ***This will disconnect your phone from your home network until the WiFi info is entered onto the device. Make sure its not doing anything else that needs the internet.*** 6. Choose to connect to the network that says WeMo, Insight, etc. 7. Exit out of the Setup Instructions or open the app. 8. Select your device and enter the information it asks for. It will prompt you for your WiFi password (not the router admin password) because the device connects directly to the router via WiFi. The app will store the WiFi settings unless you go into the settings and specifically choose not to Remember Wi-Fi Settings. I kept the settings after installing my WeMo Switch, and it made installing the Insight a lot quicker. 9. Once it has the Wi-Fi info, the device connects to your router (my phone also automatically connected to the router). 10. Installation is complete unless you want to change the name.

I chose this product because it was able to utilize my current wi-fi network and did not require the purchase of an additional gateway box (and potentially a monthly subscription) in order to communicate with the automation devices. The product advertises that The Belkin WeMo Insight Switch allows you to put your home appliances and electronic devices on a schedule and keep an eye on their costs and usage--at home or away. This was compelling because I wondered how much power my refrigerator and chest freezer (both appliances that are responsible for being large consumers of power in the typical residential home) were using. Since I travel frequently, I thought it would also be interesting to be able to also see how much power is used when I dont open and close the door of the refrigerator for an entire week vs. when I am home. Unfortunately the product fails on all counts as follows: 1. The Insight switch does not maintain its on state when the power fails. Sure, it reconnects to the network once the power turns back on but the insight switch automatically goes back to the off state. This is not a great thing in Florida during the summer where daily thunderstorms will make the power glitch at least a few times a week. Now imagine not being home and having the WeMo Insight Switch attached to your refrigerator, there is a thunderstorm, the power glitches and the WeMo Insight Switch reconnects to the network in the off state. Yeah....you guessed it....you get to come home to a refrigerator/freezer full of spoiled food. That alone is a show stopper for anyone. 2. The app is fairly easy to use but the set-up process for the Insight Switch does not occur reliably. There are delays between what you do using the app and the amount of time it takes the physical device to receive the information necessary to become part of the network. I found it frustrating typing in a 50 character network password 4 times before the Insight Switch was finally joined to the network. Another issue is that the app did not keep track of power consumption over time even though it was suppose to do that. 3. I still did not want to give up so I thought the switch would be useful in place of a daily timer on a lamp in my living room. The lamp goes on in the evening until bed time and then goes back on in the morning since I get up early and shuts off after the sun rises. I always disliked having to adjust the timer for annual time changes as well as for sunset and sunrise so I thought the WeMo Insight Switch would save the day and do all that for me automatically. Well...thwarted again by the folks at Belkin...using the app to make this rule reveals that you can only have 1 on and 1 off per day -- really!!! Didnt anyone at Belkin go to their local Lowes or Home Depot and buy a mechanical lamp timer. If they had they would see that you can set multiple on/off cycles each day. This was the straw that broke the camels back. I ended up returning both of my WeMo Insight Switches wondering how Belkin could believe that this product is anything but a gadget for someone who likes to have geeky technology in their home to impress their friends at parties. This is not a consumer product meant to be used by the typical consumer. On the plus side, the idea is great. The amount of convenience that could be realized by the typical consumer is very compelling. I cant tell you how many times I have wondered if I have locked the front door, put the garage door down and turned off lights. The problem is the folks at Belkin must not have ever tried to use this product in their own home before they tried to sell it to us. I dont recommend using this product.

Be aware that the MAC address printed on the WeMo Insight Switch is one less than the MAC address the device uses to connect to your Wifi network. This caused me a few minutes of head scratching, wondering why the device couldnt join my network. If you have MAC address access list security enabled on your wifi network, to only permit configured/expected MAC addresses to join, and enter the MAC address printed on the back of the device... it will not be able to connect. I temporarily disabled MAC address filtering on my wifi network, and the device was then able to connect without issue. Once it had connected, I checked my wifi routers list of connected devices and discovered that the MAC address used by the unit was the printed MAC address, +1. e.g. Printed MAC Address: 94:10:3E:CF:3A:22 MAC address used by the device when connecting to my wifi network: 94:10:3E:CF:3A:23 So, if you add one to the MAC address and use this value for the access list on your wifi network, it will be able to join an access list secured network. This may be why some reviewers have had issues getting the device to work on their networks. I edited the Access List entry Id added originally for the WeMo Insight Switch, added one to the last octet, saved the updated entry, re-enabled MAC Address Access List Security, and it was able to join my network with no issues at all. The MAC address printed on the unit is only used by the device when its running its own wifi network for initial device/app configuration (you have to configure your iPhone/mobile device to connect to this temporary wifi network during setup, but once the WeMo Insight Switch is configured in the app to connect to your own home wifi network, the MAC address its uses is one higher than this. Confusing, but easily solved if youre aware of it. Once connected, its been working well. Id purchased the device because Im trying to pinpoint the main reason my monthly electricity bills are so much higher than the average for my home. Thought my garage fridge might be to blame. With the Insight Switch Im now able to exclude that (only draws an average of 75 Watts)... so the hunt continues. I think this will be very useful, and also gives me an additional smart switch for home automation once Ive located the energy hogs.

It works good, just a couple things I dont like. 1) Setup was easy, I had the switch working in about two minutes with iPhone. 2) Does not give feedback. In other words, if iPhone A turns on the switch, no indication is shown on iPhone B. The same is true if the switch is manually operated. ( Feedback is given on another iPhone IF you tap on a circular arrow, then it will update the status. However, the status is not pushed to you as it is with SmartThings. ) 3) No instructions provided if you want to control your switches with more than one iPhone. Digging through the Internet, I found the simple answer. After installing the WeMo app on the second iPhone, simply put that iPhone on the same HOME network that you used when you originally set up WeMo with the first iPhone. Following the installation instructions that you did originally doesnt work. The second iPhone will not find the WeMo WiFi. Had they included this bit of information with their instructions it would have saved me about an hour of online digging. Their competitors, TP-LINK, has you create an account. By utilizing an account system it is not necessary to bring each iPhone onto the same home network for set up purposes. You simply download the app, enter your login credentials, and youre done. This could be a distinct advantage if you are 1000 miles away from home and find that you have to buy a new iPhone. ( Overall, I like the WeMo better than TP-LINK. ) Normally, when I set up home control systems I prefer to use SmartThings for controlling purposes, utilizing Z-Wave switches. Because Z-Wave uses an entirely different frequency, this can avoid interference, and, clogging up Wi-Fi networks. Another advantage of Z-Wave is that each device acts as a repeater, so if you have several Z-Wave devices, they can be located far from the hub. If your needs are simple, WeMo is a good choice.

I was really excited for this device to work as advertised because it sounds great on paper. In reality, the app functionality is buggy at best and at this moment it doesnt even work on iOS6 as stated in the specs. I bought this to control my pellet stove while we were away for Christmas. The first problem I had turned out to be a known bug with iOS6 that I was told is being worked on, but there is no date for an available fix. You can read about that issue on the WeMo forums linked here: http://community.wemothat.com/t5/Discuss-WEMO/wemo-app-1-10-1-crashes-on-iphone-5-ios-6-whenever-the-quot-more/td-p/5751 I was able to install the app on my girlfriends phone (running iOS7) and get to the more... tab in the app. Great, I thought! Next I updated the switch to the latest firmware available and set some rules to turn the switch on a few hours before we got home the following week. Everything seemed to be going wonderfully! I had almost decided to keep the device since I could actually program it with the later operating system. The time came when the rule was set to go off. I got a notification from hundreds of miles away, awesome! Well, I got 5 more of those notifications. The rule was to turn on the device once and only once. I dont know what was happening, but the usage stats were not making any sense. The heater was on when we got home, but as soon as we walked in I heard a click and the stove fans shut down. I had enough at this point and I removed the WeMo from the wall. I will be returning it because it simply is not ready yet. I really appreciate the aggressive customer support response but if there is no software support to back it up, then whats the point. I know from reading other reviews that Im not the first one to feel this way. Its a shame because it appears to be a beautifully elegant piece of hardware.

I ordered this to have at the office and turn on and off a desktop fountain during the summer and my space heater during the winter. My office has an unsecured guest network so I thought that I would be able to set it up but try as I might it would NOT connect to WIFI. On closer examination of the product materials it does stay it will not work on corporate networks due to port firewalls. Since I couldnt use it for my main intended purpose I took it home and thought I would take advantage of its energy measuring capabilities and perhaps use it as a vampire slayer. I plugged the power strip for my TV, cable DVR, and x-box one into the deceive. On my home network it connected easily. It told me that when all my devices were off or in standby mode they used 41 watts, which based on my utility rates is $31.88 a year if plugged in 24/7. So if you use this product as a vampire slayer and turn the power off half the time it will take 3.7 years to recoup the investment. The reports on energy usage are cool, but the savings just are not there to justify the device at this price point. If you are looking for a timer for a light or something in a location with strong WIFI signal this product will deliver. However similar products like the

This is the 4th Wemo product I have purchased and I love these products. The only downside is the app to set the rules is a bit cumbersome. The devices set up easily with your wifi system and reconnect automatically after power outages or wifi interruptions. They have a good range pickup equal to that of my iPhone or better. They respond quickly to the app when using the power override from the app. Setting the rules takes a bit of thought on how to get what you want programmed but there are lots of options on what you want the device to do. You can also set multiple rules on one device allowing you to turn it on or off multiple times daily or different patterns on different days. The power tracking utility of the insight switch is awesome! You can even set a watt threshold where the outlet will not allow power out unless the demand is greater than the watts you set it at. This keeps your outlet from leaking power to devices not being used. I wish they were a little cheaper or you could get a good discount for purchasing several devices at once but after using Wemo for just over a year with flawless operation, its money well spent.

I tried to use this on multiple objects in my room, and I ended up having it sit on my side dresser for awhile after being disappointed. Kind of thick, so if you have an outlet behind something against the wall, be prepared not to use it there or to have it sticking out a good amount. For some reason, some of things I tried to use this on was hard to plug into. Bad planning on my part and even stupidity, but for some reason didnt expect this to be 3 prongs. After having to do some cleaning and moving around, I was able to set this up to my main bedroom light. Setup was a little wonky at first, but it was pretty easy and painless in the long run. Thought I read somewhere that you could walk into room with this, and it would pick up your phone and turn the light on for you. Didnt see this option in setting unfortunately. Man am I satisfied though! There was some disappointed with the setup of things, expectations, and settings.. but overall I would recommend this. So far one of the cheapest routes for this type of thing for lights, and one of the few at this time that work with Amazon Echo. Love it with my Alexa!