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

I use this to control lighting in my home. It was very easy to hook up (less than 5 minutes) and it works as advertised. I like how it detects the exact time of sunset in my area and turns on the lamp at that time. Very cool. I havent had to reset it yet. I try to stay on top of the software updates in order to keep things working correctly - there have been two updates in the past two months. Takes about 6-7 minutes to update. The app is free and very easy to navigate from my iphone and my ipad. The power consumption feature isnt all that useful to me but it is a nice extra. Overall, this is a product that works as advertised and makes my life easier. I recommend it. (I have four of them now - all working well).

I use this to control a tower fan in my bedroom. I use the iPhone app to set a timer (to turn it on around bedtime and to turn if off in the AM just before my alarm clock goes off). I used to use an old school timer (the one with a dial where you had to pull out plastic notches whenever you wanted the outlet to turn on and off) but if we had a power outage, it would lose track of time. This one solves that problem. Also, you can manually turn on and off using the app or touching the power button on top, so you arent beholden to the scheduler. It was fairly easy to set up, easy to update the firmware when needed. Lastly, it tracks usage (watts), which is interesting to look at. The iphone app is a bit slow to load on my 4S and if you leave the app to go do something else and come back to it, it has to open from scratch, but all in all Im real happy with how it works. Then again, my phone device is a few years outdated, so that may be cause. If they could get the cost down, Id buy more of them for my home, but in the meantime this is really the only device I need on a timer so...

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 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.....

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.

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.

I bought this from Amazon Warehouse Deals - packaging damaged, otherwise like new. It arrived on time. I downloaded and installed the WeMo app on iPhone 6. Then I plugged the WeMo Insight Switch into 120VAC, and the WiFi light blinked green for 30 seconds, then blinked yellow. I never saw the device listed under the Settings:WiFi tab for iPhone 6 or iPad Mini Retina 2. The WeMo app never saw it either. Using Net Analyzer on the iPhone 6, it never appeared on my network. I tried entering the WeMo ID in Settings:WiFi to find the device manually, but that didnt work either. After waiting on hold for 27 minutes, a Belkin service tech answered and told me to reset the device by holding in the small button on top for 5 seconds with the device unplugged, then for another five seconds with the device newly plugged in. This caused the device ID to appear in the Settings:WiFi menu on the iPhone 6 (and iPad Mini Retina 2). After acquisition, I was able to get the WeMo app to recognize the device. It now works properly. Some caveats - If the device doesnt appear in your WiFi, use the reset button/procedure outlined above. Have your WiFi network password available - the WeMo app will need it to connect to the device. It will be easier to do your first network connection with the device plugged in near your router. There is NO WeMo app available for iPad. Youll need to control WeMo devices with your iPhone or Android phone. ********** UPDATE 4/24/2015 After a power outage, the insight and switches gave us a bonus - they now come on at midnight every night, in addition to following their previously programmed rules. Ill try the reset procedure again and see if it cures the problem.

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.

Update! After doing some research on the web and reading through lots of forums, I found a fix that worked for me using an Airport Extreme: 1. Updated settings in AirPort Utility to WPA/WPA2 personal, rather than WPA2 personal. Waited for Airport Express to restart. 2. Verified that iPhone connected to airport network. 3. Opened WEMO app and connected to WEMO network. 4. Selected AirPort network. This time WEMO connected fine, and was able to work. 5. Followed the WEMO instructions, and it works. Still annoyed that WEMO couldnt tell me the fix, but hey Ill take it Absolute Crap! Worked well until we had to change the router, now it will not connect no matter what we do. The app will not recognize it, and I cant return it for a refund. Before you buy this, think.....do you want to waste money on technology that sucks???