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

The idea behind these WeMo plugs is great. If Belkin could have made an app that was solid I would give this a better review. Set-up was a pain in the rear. I am pretty good with this kind of stuff and was baffled at how confusing the initial set-up was to configure this device. It took me a solid 10 minutes to realize that this device was actually emitting a wifi signal and that I needed to connect to it in order to set it up. I kept wondering why it wasnt connecting with my phone or why the app wasnt connecting to my router. Anyhow, once I got it set up and working properly (so I thought), I plugged my whole house fan into it. Great, now I can control my whole house fan and (which is in my attic) and then have the time set to turn it off. Well... the app is clunky. It wasnt easy and straight forward to set up the timer. It wasnt easy to distinguish if the timer was even enabled or not. Belkin calls it setting a rule. This doesnt seem very consumer friendly to me. Why not just have an option to set a timer and then see a count down? After playing around with it for a bit (turning the whole house fan off and on) I settled into the first evening having this device and a few hours after letting it do its thing I opened up the app to turn off the whole house fan. To my dismay I had discovered that the WeMo was no longer listed as an active device. I spent the better part of half an hour trying to fix the issue with the app before getting the ladder out, climbing in the attic and disconnecting the whole house fan from it. The next day I boxed it up and sent it back.... I hard wired the whole house fan :)

I purchased one of these on a price dip, thinking it was time to give this technology a try. Its a rather clever device, providing integration of home automation controls and energy monitoring, with capable notifications, actionable rules and remote management. However, execution does have a few flaws. The limitations become more apparent in a more complex scenarios: no support for hidden wireless networks, inability of software to deal with multiple access points, or recognize home and remote wireless networks if they share the same network name. This device would likely perform much better in a country home with just one wireless access point and little interference, but in a dense urban environment, where 2.4GHz wireless spectrum is heavily congested (with up to 4 wireless stations visible on every Wi-Fi channel), the device seems to have connectivity issues. To provide adequate signal coverage, I already had a couple of access points on dynamically selected channels - but after installing this WeMo Switch, I had to add another one just 4 fee away from it, otherwise it would drop off the network every couple of hours. Even with an access point so close, I still end up having to pull it out and reconnect every couple of days, as it still drops the wireless connection. The vendor specifically states that multiple access points could cause a smartphone application not to find the device - that is definitely the case, as on many occasions I could not see the device while on Wi-Fi, but by shutting off Wi-Fi on my smartphone, I could manage it as if I were remote. The vendor should definitely invest additional effort into application (to remove constraints related to access point / Wi-Fi network name and visibility), as well as explore other connectivity options for urban dwellers, either by supporting 5GHz network band or by integrating PowerLine support.

Some reviews do not give this product the justice it deserves. I was cautious about buying this switch based on the issues experienced by some, but I am happy to say I am satisfied with my purchase. In fact, I bought 4 of these switches for various lamps throughout my home and plan to buy 4 more. They were easy to setup and I have a few simple rules setup in the app for lamps to turn on and off at various times. The ability to turn the switch on and off when I am not home is a nice as well. Some advice: When you initially setup after opening the box, each individual switch will most likely want to update the firmware. I recommend that you dont do the update when the app prompts you to after the initial install until you have all switches plugged in and recognized by the app. When I setup my first switch I acknowledged the update immediately and it took forever. Thinking there may have been an issue, I turned the switch off and then back on. All seemed okay and the update was successful. After I setup my rules, I ran the update which seemed to work pretty quick, but it turned all my switches off and I had to go back into the app to turn back on. The rules feature is kind of confusing, but if you play around with the the features or consult the Belkin website for troubleshooting it becomes easy to setup rules when certain switches turn on or off. It seems like you cannot personalize each switch; rather you will need to apply a specific rule to one or more of your switches. In this case, you may have multiple rules. The ability to remove a switch from a rule seems confusing. Being unsure if a lamp was removed properly, I just deleted and re-created the rule with the lamp I wanted. I gave this a 4 star rating because overall, its a great product and does what I needed it to do, but I think Belkin can do better with the app and making it more user friendly.

I bought this because I have an Amazon Echo. Upon further research, this was the one that worked best for me because I liked that it had more recipes that worked in conjunction with Echo on IFTTT than other current brands. Heres what I noticed: Its not too suited to control a light/lamp. You know why? If youre walking around in the middle of the night and your Wemo Insight Switch is located somewhere near your feet where your light is plugged into, youre going to have to feel around for the Wemos switch. Even with Echo, its inconvenient because if you dont want to wake everyone up by calling to Echo, youre going to have to feel for that Wemo switch in the dark or take your phone literally EVERYWHERE with you so you can turn on the light with your phone. Now, what if your wifi goes down? If your Wemo Insight Switch is somewhere quite out of reach, youre going to have to really reach for it - so if youre in the dark... lol. My recommendation is to use this on other things that you may want to control power with. Its feature is that it keeps track of how much time you use on it and how much wattage is used. Im not very creative, so I dont know what that leaves for you to use this Wemo Insight Switch with. lol. However, if you dont know how to install a Wemo Light Switch on your wall or if your house is fitted with 3-way light switches instead of single-poles, this (and others like this) is really the only alternative for you. Dont get me wrong though. There is nothing wrong with the Wemo Insight Switch. In fact, its amazing! I love how convenient it is. Once I find other things (besides my light) I can use this with, Ill be able to track the power wattage used, set when to automatically turn it on or off (like when Im on vacation and need to set it for the cats or just to make it look like Im home), or just move it around and use it with different appliances simply by plugging and unplugging it. If youre using this with Echo, theres an additional feature now (accessible from Echos app) - you can set it to turn your appliances/light on or off when it detects you leaving and arriving home! It does this with your phones location services. Pretty neat, huh? Loving my semi-automated home more and more. :)

I like that the Insight switch lets me see the energy consumption of the device attached, and that I can control it with weather events through IFTTT. I use this one to turn off our whole-house fresh air ventilator when the outside humidity gets too high, the temperature gets too low, or the pollen count reaches a certain point. But there is a flaw in the entire WeMo operational model if you want to use it for any kind of large scale use. You must have a smartphone or tablet to control any of the WeMo devices. More importantly, for any given phone (or table), you can only control the devices at one location. Why does this matter? Because if you plan to use WeMo devices to control functions at your vacation home as well as your regular home, youll need two phones - one for each house. Im not sure of the technical model, but it seems that the phone apps can only connect to one location at a time. So you can see all the devices at the Vacation home if you just installed a bunch there and set them up with your phone. But if you come home and install a device in your home, it will forget all the devices at your vacation home - and the only way to get them back is to go to your vacation home and set them up again. At which point it will forget all the devices you set up at your regular home. In fact, at least for us, it even dropped all the programming for the vacation home devices and they were no longer controllable from IFTTT. The only solution is to have two phones, or a phone and a tablet - one for each location. I had hoped to use WeMo to control our 3 vacation rental houses. But Im not about to set aside 3 separate tables for each, as well as a phone for my own home. Sigh. So close.....

Took a very long time to set up. Had all sorts of issues trying to get the app to recognize the device. I had to actually put it aside and try again the following day because it just wasnt working. Two days later, AFTER I already filled out the amazon return request, i tried one last time to set it up. It FINALLY worked. Now when I use it, Alexa never understands me the first time. I dont have that problem with any other commands except when I ask her to to turn this thing on. There should be a better way to have Alexa turn this thing on then by calling it Insight or Wemo Insight. Especially if she cant understand what Im saying the first time.

The Belkin Insight is just sloppy. It feels and acts cheap, and I’m sure that isn’t what Belkin is going for in terms of home automation. 1. Daylight Savings isn’t exactly a new concept. There is no excuse for the WeMo failing to account for it. 2. The WeMo insight last on for measurement doesn’t really make sense. It reads “last on for” as the time my espresso machine’s heating element cycled. Last on for should come from the rules/how long the WeMo is switched on. 3. Support requests require device serial numbers and model numbers, which should be reported in the app. Why do I need to unplug the device to get these numbers? 4. Setup requires multiple attempts before it “sticks.” Pretty much every review I’ve read after purchasing my WeMo complains about this. iPhone app shows all kinds of random graphical glitches. 5. Editing rules doesn’t always seem to register either, sometimes requiring multiple edit attempts. Home automation is a relatively new concept. In order to see wide adoption, it needs to work well. This probably isnt the platform thats going to make it work.

UPDATE: 02/23/2015 After having it continually being unreliable and numerous phone calls, I must say DO NOT BUY. I have had electrical heaters turning on and off by themselves, lost connectivity, and inability to control the devices remotely. I am currently looking for alternatives. DO NOT BUY. UPDATE: 04/23/2014 After being tenacious and working with Belkin, I am happy to report that the Wemos have worked flawlessly for a month. I installed at least 1 additional firmware update and 1 iOS Wemo update. I also assigned a static IP address to each of the wemos. My understanding is that there were cloud issues at Belkin which are believed to have caused the majority of my frustrations. Either way, I have increased my rating since they are functioning now, but cant go as far to endorse them since the issues should not have been experienced in the first place. ORIGINAL: 03/03/2014 I bought these hoping for a solution for controlling electric heaters in a modular home about 2 hours away from my home network. After you install them in the app, you have to enable remote access. I did all of this and was able to turn the devices on and off. This worked for about 2 weeks. Eventually, I received an unable to detect devices remotely. At this point, there is nothing you can do. I was using them to keep water pipes thawed so I would not have to winterize and relying on Belkin turned out to be a big mistake. Because the Belkin WeMo devices malfunctioned, I could not turn on the electric heaters, which caused me to end up with frozen pipes. I made it back up the modular home. Reset them again and everything worked, Headed back home and in about 2 weeks, they went back off the network and I was unable to access them. IN SHORT, DO NOT BUY THESE BELKIN DEVICES. YOU WILL BE DISAPPOINTED AND THEY WILL NOT WORK RELIABLY OR AS ADVERTISED. I have an open case with Belkin but I am getting ready to pack them back up and ship them back to Amazon as soon as I can make back up there. These devices are false-advertising at best and Amazon should refuse to sell them.

After a few false starts (firmware updates and resets) I got the switch finally running, When it works, it works well. I have been trying it out around the house with various devices to monitor energy usage. Some times on re-plugging it in it will not see my WiFi network and must be reset from scratch, frustrating. The unit also will NOT work with IFTTT or show up in the WeMo application (iOS) outside my home network. Period. So I cant control it remotely, while my light switches work just fine. I have tried contacting Belkin support several times, to be blunt. Its just a waste of time and an exercise in frustration. They seem to only be available by email (I tried calling only to end up in voice menu/hold/voice mail hell) and respond with useless canned scripts that dont even address the questions Ive asked. If youre a technical person and dont mind diagnosing your own issues, get one or two of these devices and decide if they are for you. If you are not technical, stick with a more traditional time type switch, Belkin support is absolutely useless. *** 01/20/14 Update *** I left my response comment to Belkin here, and did reply to the ticket email again. I have yet to receive any response from them. So much for their being eager to help. I have dropped my review down to one star because of this. Again, if youre the tinkering type and dont mind spending the money, these devices are neat, but if you require any assistance from Belkin for their use Id save my money. They do NOT stand by their products.

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.....