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

It took me 3 hours total to set it up. The initial setup was somewhat easy. Connecting to IFTTT was painful and took several complete factory resets. BTW, how to perform a factory reset is impossible to find on their web site which kept giving me page not found errors. I had to guess many different combinations and after a while one worked. They have many cute videos that obviously cost much more than a simple owners manual, but they dont actually tell you the simple workings of the device. The app is nice to use, but had to be deleted and re-downloaded to make the setup work. Maybe they could hire some good programmers instead of a huge marketing department. I actually like the device, but I think I could make a bundle explaining to people how to use one.

I bought the WeMo Insight Switch on a whim when it was on sale, then a Motion Sensor + Switch bundle later, so these are the products Im writing about (the Amazon page appears to mix reviews for all WeMo products). PROS * Works entirely with WiFi; does not require a special hub like some home-automation systems do * Aesthetically pleasing hardware design * Easy to integreate with other WeMo products (e.g., make Motion Sensor control a Switch) * App can be configured for remote access to control of devices when you are away from your home network * Does not rely on Internet connection CONS * Somewhat high (~1.5W) power usage per WeMo device when idle, presumably to keep WiFi radio powered * No API (except via Android and iOS SDKs) * Sometimes difficult to integreate with other products I ended up returning the Switch+Motion combo, followed closely by the Insight Switch. My biggest reason for returning the Switch+Motion bundle is that I couldnt make the Motion product do much besides control the Switch. This is fine if your house is entirely WeMo, but I was hoping to integrate it with my Philips Hue bulbs and couldnt. (I could, actually, with some third-party help: plug in a Switch for nothing, just to be there, then tell Motion to turn on or off the Switch with motion or after a certain period of inactivity, then use IFTTT with a trigger that fires when the Switch is turned off and an action that turns off Hue. This could be simplified a bit if IFTTT had a trigger for lack of motion like the WeMo app does, but it doesnt, and the whole setup is still a bit convoluted.) For developers or others who may want to tinker, this product lacks an easily accessible API (Hue, by contrast, is exposed via HTTP and controllable via REST commands). They offer SDKs for Android and iOS, so it appears the only option for customization is writing your own app. There is also not a Web interface, so the app (theirs or a third-party one made with the SDK) is really the only way to control these. This wont matter much to most people, but I like to customize some things have depended on this with other products before. As previously stated, all WeMo products use WiFi to communicate, which is an advantage in that you do not need a special hub like you do with, for example, Hue (execpt Belkins recently announced light bulbs need a hub, too); you can just use your existing WiFi network. However, it has a couple disadvantages: first, all devices need to be within range of your WiFi signal to be controllable, which was never a problem for me but may be for other people. Second, WiFi is more power-hungry than other wireless technologies typically used for home automation (e.g., ZigBee or Z-Wave). I suspect well never have battery-powered WeMo devices for this reason. My Switch, Insight Switch, and Motion Detector each ate up about 1.5 W just sitting there idle, which is 3-5 times higher than similar ZigBee and Z-Wave devices Ive tried (and ZigBee and Z-Wave devices that take batteries usually use even less power in that case beacuse they dont extend the network theyre on, which is something they usually do and exposes another one of their advantages: a possibly greater range). My suggestions: * If you only want a couple WeMo devices, WeMo may work well. Id be hesitant to fill a house with them because they use significantly more power than comparable alternatives, but with only a couple its (a) probably not a big difference, and (b) probably cheaper in that all you need is the WeMo device and a WiFi network (and the Android or iOS app), so you wont have to buy or configure a special hub. * If you dont already have a lot of WeMo products but think you might want a lot, Id suggest another solution that may lend itself to less power consumption and better integration with other systems. Personally, Ive returned all my WeMo products and switched over to SmartThings, which offers compatiblity with many ZigBee and Z-Wave controllable switches and sensors. (It does require a hub, but I think the tradeoff is worth it. Unfortunately, SmartThings is also heavily relaint on the Internet at the moment, but they claim to be working on that.) SmartThings can integrate with WeMo, but I swapped my devices (switch and motion sensor, at least) anyway because I wanted the ZigBee advantages Ive mentioned. * If you only want the Insight Switch and you only want it to know the power consumption of your devices, consider a Kill-A-Watt instead (thats how I determined the surprising amount of power WeMo devices consume even when idle). My luck with the products Ive used hasnt been as bad as others, and everything seemed to work well when I tried. My biggest problem was the lack of customization options, but there are other minor issues as well as I mentioned that also fueled my desire to seek alternatives. Still, for the average user who only wants maybe one or a few WeMo devices, I think it may work well.

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.

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.

It took me an HOUR to get an insight connected. It should have taken 5 minutes. Belkin has taken a simple task of connecting a device to a home network and made it ridiculously cumbersome due to a very poorly designed app. Im quite experienced with setting up and connecting devices to a wifi network. Maybe the app is too dumbed down for me, but this should be a simple matter of selecting the device and pairing it with a wifi network. For those who have seen the movie Office Space, the scene were they take the malfunctioning printer out to a field and smash it into pieces is EXACTLY what I would like to do if the wemo app were an animate object. First, the app throws up a dialog about some settings, even though I saw that dialog a kajillion times, I dont remember what it said. The first time it came up, I dutifully clicked on the button that would (so I thought) give me useful information. Unfortunately this was not the case because Im on the latest version of Android, and apparently the instructions are written for a different version as I only had one of the items I was supposed to shut off (which was already disabled). Unfortunately, each time you are at the very beginning of insight installation, you get this dialog. It doesnt seem smart enough to detect if your settings are already correct, nor does it let you disable the dialog during the install steps. Once you get past the dialog, you select your device and then youre forced to go through a set of screens to connect your insight and app. On the last screen it says its connecting, but I never did get a message saying the app was connected to the app. If you X out of the screen, youre forced to start over at the device selection screen. The only way I could get the insight and app to connect was to do the following, once I got to the last screen where it said it was connecting, close the wemo app and re-open the app. Then when the wemo app opens, it tries to connect to the insight. It took me 20 minutes to realize I should try to close and re-open the app. Once I got the insight and wemo app connected, I was able to get the insight connected to my wifi network. And then the next problem arose. The app kept throwing errors about not being able to turn on remote access. No matter how many attempts, I could not get past this error. Also, the insight never did show up on the main screen, even after closing and re-opening the app. I did notice during the install that there were a couple of times where my phone reporting the insight connection as unstable. Next, I reset the insight and uninstalled and reinstalled the wemo app per the instructions on belkins web page. Once again started the pairing process. Once again, got the remote access error. Tried remote access again, then the device showed up in the app. A floor lamp was plugged into the insight. Turned the lamp on and off with the wemo app and it worked fine. But in the settings, it did not register that remote settings was on, even after using the app to turn the floor lamp on and off. Within the settings I selected the remote access and it then realized it was on I guess. FINALLY, my insight is connected and so far works. But Im afraid to connect the 2nd insight device. That the app might break the connection to the first device. After the insight is paired to the app and the wifi network, Echo pairs very easily to the insight device. This happens in the Echo app using a menu in the settings. Setting Echo up on the insight was the easiest part of the process. Another app quirk is that sometimes I would get the device and rules buttons on the bottom of the main screen, sometimes I wouldnt. Sometimes, Id have the icons at the top right of the main screen, sometimes I didnt. App performance seemed to be slow or go out to lunch occasionally and Id close the app and re-open it. Sometimes, clicking on something didnt seem to register with the app, sometimes it did. An alternative to the current app design would be to offer a guided install and the direct aka expert install for people experienced with installing smart devices on a network. The expert install would scan the area for a broadcasting device, allow the user to select the device, pair it with the app and wifi network, and wham bam be done with it. Device settings for renaming the device could be the last step or easily accessible through app settings. NEVER should the main app screen be hidden from the user. And if you X out of the guided install, you go back to the main screen, not the dumbed down getting started screen. This app feels like the specifications were VERY poorly written and test cases may have just been for the happiest of happy paths. It also feels like no integration testing was done for the various parts of the app. The only reason I bought a belkin product was for the Amazon Echo integration. This review is written after Amazon released the Echo SDK and hopefully more home automation products come along and I can dump the belkin products, or maybe belkin we re-write the app. I wanted to give the device a 1 star rating, but the extra star is because so far (after 15 minutes anyway) the insight continues to work. See how well this goes in the long term since some people have reported having problems with their devices. Updated one day later - Tried to install the 2nd insight device. Tried 5 times, roughly 40 minutes then I gave up. Im past the return window, otherwise itd be getting boxed up and sent back to Amazon. Each time the install went like this - my phone detects the insight and connects to it. I open the app and the app connects to the new insight device. Very quickly the app brings up the settings for the new device; the screen where I can change the name. I hit Done, and the app goes back to the main screen in which the devices are listed. The new device does not show up. I reset the device (apparently this is the only way to get it to show up as a device my phone can connect to again), and go back through the same process. Never does the new device show up as a connected device. Shutting down the app and re-opening did not help either. Also, each time I received the error about remote access not be able to be enabled. And each time, remote access was listed as enabled in the settings. After each reset, the light sequence went like this - green, green and orange (this is when my phone would detect the insight and connect to it), green while the app is connecting to it, no lights (which does match my already connected insight, so this must be OK), then orange. I believe orange is poor or no connection. Removing a star in my rating Updated 3 days after setting up the first device - Now the first device is flashing the orange color and does not show up in as being detectable in the wemo app and echo cant find it either. I absolutely refuse to reset the device and go back through the poorly executed installation process. The insight is less than 10 feet away from the router. Im completely done with this product, if I could give 0 stars I would

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 bought two of these babies. I use one for an appliance that uses a lot of electricity. Its really cool that I can now see how much its costing each day. The app works pretty well. I did have an issue at first and it would turn all the time after a minute. I had initially set that rule up to test the unit but forgot about it. It took me a little while to figure out what I had done and to turn that rule off. They call that user error :) One complaint that I have is that the button on the unit itself is too sensitive. I have inadvertently turned things off just by a slight accidental touch. I wish the button was recessed or something to prevent that from happening. This could potentially be a big problem if the unit is connected to something very important. A slight touch from a child or someone would turn it off unexpectedly. For that reason, I think I am going to make something to protect the switch. Minus only one star for that even though it could be a big deal to some people. I love the functionality of the unit too much to take any more off. Its also something that can be corrected with a little inginuity.

It is a very nice product. It is easy to set up, nice app, BUT when the power goes off it stays off and does not reset. The items I want to monitor power on tend to be appliances like the heater, furnace and refrigerator. In the several months I have had it I on the furnace I have gotten home 3 times, and woke up once, to a very cold house. I deducted a star for every two times the house was cold. It has been in the single numbers and teens most of the winter so the house gets cold fast and takes hours to warm up. Power glitches seem rare but even very short ones, so short they do not reset our clocks, will reset this device. Also very short outages do not send a disconnected email. If it did you would see it and turn it back on.

The product works great for an air conditioner -- once you get it working. Thats the hard part. For me, the trickiest piece was realizing that the device will work reliably only on a DEDICATED 2.4 GHz WiFi band. If you have your router set up to use the same SSID over both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, it may not work. I had to go into my router settings and create a dedicated 2.4 GHz band (I named it SSID - 2.4 GHz, and named my separate 5 GHz band SSID - 5 GHz). I then connected the Insight to that band. Once my phone was on the same band, I could set up the device correctly. After initial setup, I could switch my phone to the 5 GHz band (or any other internet connection) and control the switch. All in all, its a great product and very convenient if you have a device you want to control remotely. But getting it set up does take some work. EDIT: See the helpful comment from PC Tech below on avoiding damage to an air conditioner. In short, dont turn the AC on and off in quick succession.

Im confused by the negative reviews and I think because the reviews are regarding all the WeMo products listed-- I am writing in reference to the WeMo OUTLET-- there was NO WIRING-- I stuck it in my living room outlet, downloaded the WeMo app, set that up in about 5 minutes. Named the outlet. Went to my Echo: Alexa app, had her find it. Done. No more crawling under the tree to get the lights off and on- Alexa. turn on Christmas tree. does it. I currently am using 3 of them, all have worked great, the Echo hasnt lost synchronization with them and its been 4 weeks. I knocked it a star for having to use 2 apps to get the job done, but I also realize that was going to be inevitable. I would send one to my parents but their not tech savvy enough to want to deal with toggling between 2 apps to get the set up done. So, in a nutshell-- its doing exactly what I wanted, and took all of 8 minutes to get it going.