Top positive review
3 people found this helpful
Four Lights, Three Wemos, Two Commands, One Alexa, and a cat named Snickers
By Melster on Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2017
I have bought three of these so far and definitely plan on purchasing a couple more, all are working well and as expected. I purchased one a couple months ago, loved it, and so I bought two more just this past week. I have the three of them set up to turn on/off four lights twice a day (three hours in the morning and 5+ hours in the evening) and also have them hooked up to Alexa with two commands. They are fairly easy to setup initially via the app and also simple to pair with Alexa, just follow the instructions and you're golden. I'm not going to lie though, I did encounter a couple minor, super small hiccups during the setup but nothing that I couldn't figure out or would cause me to rate this any lower than a 5 star (maybe a 4.5 but since half stars aren't allowed we will round up). First tiny hiccup: the first wemo I purchased took a few tries in getting the app to recognize it but with some persistence, a dash of patience, and a couple of restarts of the wemo, wemo app, and iPad and it was good to go in less than 15 minutes and it hasn't given me any trouble since (the two other wemos I purchased a week or so after and together they took less than 5 minutes to setup). Second and last little hiccup (solved in less than 10 mins but still something for users to be aware of): getting Alexa to turn my two newest wemos on at the same time by saying one command, I thought I could be clever and name both wemos with the same name and Alexa would know to turn both on/off when I said their name, however, it turns out that you have to instead create a "group" within Alexa's app containing the wemos you want to turn on/off together and the caveat is they cannot have the same name within the wemo app. If anyone figured out how to side step this (besides creating a group or asking Alexa more than one command) let me know, but naming two wemos the same name just did not work for me (or Alexa). Use one wemo for two lights! - My third wemo works double and controls our two small lights on either side of our tv, just plug a multi-socket plugin into the wemo plug and wah-la, a one plug wemo became a two plug wemo. :) Lastly, and most importantly, our cat Snickers is a HUGE FAN of these wemos and appreciates them very much because it makes her feel like we are home if we get home late or go away for the weekend. And yes, Snickers told me this herself, she also said that her and Alexa get along great and that they talk at least a few times a day. I have not witnessed any of their interaction because she says they only chat when we aren't home, and trust me I've tried asking Alexa if she talk with Snickers and she just outright denies knowing who Snickers is altogether. I have also tried looking into Alexa's app for the conversations but to no avail, I suspect either Snickers is going onto my iPad and deleting their convos or Alexa is not recording them. I contemplated getting a security camera but as much as I want proof of their friendship I would just never forgive myself if I ruined it. In any case, these are great and I definitely recommend purchasing more than one, at least enough to control all the lamps you turn on daily or even periodically because the wemo app also lets you set which days you want it to turn on/off.
Top critical review
293 people found this helpful
I really wanted to like it, but the failure rate & modes are shockingly high & incompatible with safe, sustained use (updates)
By AH on Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2017
I really, really wanted to like this product & technology, but the failure modes and failure rates are astoundingly high. Relevant background to my skill levels: I bought a couple of the plugs so that I could experiment with how to automate my home. I am neither a software or hardware engineer, however I am a (very highly) qualified engineer and I have self taught myself a lot about network hardware & application of software packages. I have an advanced router with repeater, fully LAN & WAN connected house, with network switches, POE devices etc. that I installed & runs pretty cleanly. First of all the app - I am still on 2nd level support waiting for a response to an issue where I am patient zero. I can create a rule, but it does not give me the choice of days. It is the same rule every day or no rule at all. I have tried installing the app on 2 i devices, same issue(the even have different itunes accounts to further firewall them from each other) So the app is highly buggy. App version 1.17.1. 2nd, the switch(es) I have RMA'ed one of my 2 as I still could, the first one I am stuck with. The 2nd one experienced worse functionality issues than the first one. It had to go as this is a defective unit. The rules limited me, so I tried anyway. Initial first time setup was quite smooth & I was initially impressed. (Hadn't realized the rules issues yet) Paired it to Alexa, that was pretty smooth too (Still impressed) Ran it for a few days, had fun having Alexa switch it on & off etc. Then we had a power outage. Big system failure on the WEMO. After restarting power, everything else came back up properly. I tried restarting the first switch (the still semi functional one that is not RMA'ed) several times to see if it would boot up, it actually would not boot up until I had pushed the power button several times & actually physically unplugged & replugged it several times. The WEMO devices were not recognized by the app on my phone, until I switched it to the same wifi network as they were running on. This i snot helpful when you are trying to make a remote access switch. So after trying & rebooting I have given up. I cannot set up a smart house with devices that require a full factory reboot and me to delete the app, reset all rules from scratch, every time the power fails or blips. So sadly I have to say the devices are junk, the app is junk and they need to be fully redesigned before both parts of the system become stable & reliable. Sorry Belkin, but you also have a lot of people on your own Community pages with many similar problems & your own support is not the one finding solutions, it is other users who have more time to do this than most of the rest of us have. So, folks, if you read this far, don't waste your time & money, these devices are great in concept, but are far from Implementation Ready for mainstream use. I have never been paid to write a review - good or bad and I have never been given anything for a review, except for one thing that was sent to me that I didn't want & I contacted the vendor & asked for an RMA (They said donate it - so I did). What you read is my genuine experience. Sadly 1 star reviews get pushed out of sight on Amazon & they are hard to access (even your own ones). Thanks for your time. Updated 3/17 to add rules screenshot showing the app issue with no days selectable. App version 1.17.1 (420001) that I am trying to deal with on 2nd level support. I still struggle with the concept that I am the only person with this issue & that it is identical on 2 unrelated Apple devices that are on different accounts. Just a side note - when Customers are on the phone with your reps, when discussing the product, it really makes a better impression of your company when they are aware of who your major competitor(s) are. 1st level support had never even heard of TP Link (check the recording it you don't believe me). 3/30/2017 update. I found a workaround out of sheer frustration & anger &, well, it is still strange. I had a blank screen for the days selection when creating rules. Nothing showed up at all, ever, I have deleted & reinstalled the app 3 times, done a full hardware reset on the switches 3+ times, had Belkin 2nd level support on the phone - you name it. (That was a whole different story - see the response comments!) So I was giving it one last try to see if it would work, I reinstalled everything from scratch. Set up a new rule - still nothing snowing in the days area of the screen. So I was really very angry about how much time & energy I had spent on this whole exercise & I was absentmindedly tapping my phone screen repeatedly, when I suddenly noticed that it was highlighting days of the week. So I played around some more. I can get it to highlight, at most, 6 of 7 days, in any combination. I have to guess where the day is to be selected on the screen, then I can find it. I sometimes have to tap that spot several times to get the day to select (no it is not my touchscreen, both devices have the same response) What I then found out was, if I select a day & I can now see it, that means that day is one in which the rule will NOT work. It Will work on the days that are not selected & still invisible on the screen. I have attached a couple of random screen shots so you can see what is going on. Is the issue fixed - no, not at all, it is still there & the software still has a huge flaw. Does it work enough that I want to continue to try to experiment with it - yes Will I want to see a software update to fix this issue - yes Do I want to continue to use this switch for the short term - yes So in short, I will not send it back, yet. There is something going on. I tried this workaround on 2 different Apple products (Iphone 6 & Ipad Mini 3) and the workaround works on both. Is it still fatally flawed - yes. Please can you pass this on to your 2nd or even higher level Engineers as there is still a problem that must get fixed, but this is a partial workaround. By the way, I also tried changing the screen color settings to see if it was screen contrast or color related - no it is not, the Apple devices are working exactly as they should, it is your software with the bug. If you want me to try anything else, have your engineers get in touch & we can see what we can do. I have still lost significant confidence in the product & am very unsure if I want to invest in any more of them to automate other parts of my home at this time.
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