Daily Archive: September 30, 2013

A Good Head Start On Affordable Home Automation

We’ve had the pump running on a timer but that’s pretty inefficient and inconvenient when we want hot water during the hours the pump isn’t running. I bought this little unit and had it running within 5 minutes. I downloaded the Android ap and even though its still in Beta it functioned just fine. It took a couple tries to get it right, but was really easy/intuitive. Now I can turn the pump on/off from my smart phone, even when i’m not on WIFI (as long as I have data connection on my phone). I’d recommend this device for anybody who needs power automation from their phone! It’s genius!!

I really dont have a big technical background as im just a marketer by day with an MBA. however i have to say this product set up and operation worked without ANY issues. i really felt the need to write a positive review because i couldn’t described a simpler process and the app is SUPER user friendly. i dont think the setup and use could be any easier.

I experimented with it for a couple weeks before an out of town trip. I originally set it up in the sidelight window next to my front door and used the IFTTT website to have it send me a text when it detected motion on my front porch. It was hit and miss, I think the glass, time of day and reflections may have been an issue. I opted to aim it inside the house by the front door instead and it was good peace of mind during my trip. I have areas where I want to experiment with this some more for turning on lamps when motion is detected. I used the switch as a lamp timer during my trip, and while I’m home, it turns on a small lamp in the mornings at the same time my alarm goes off. For the lamp timer, I configured it with the WeMo app for the iPhone. I can’t wait to see what other options will become available from Belkin.

The initial setup was easy and the iPhone app worked for a day or two. But, later on the app stopped working, and it works only if I re-install it (killing the app and restarting doesn’t work). I think it’s more to do with the version of iOS that I’m running.

To control the switch from my android phone, I created two recipes on ifttt, to turn on or off the switch by sending #on or #off message from Google Talk; I’ve shared the recipes, you can search on the ifttt site. The only problem with this ifttt’s google talk interface is the ifttt bot goes offline often, and when I contacted ifttt, they told that they are working on stabilizing the bot. Hope it’ll be fixed soon, so that I can control the switch from my phone or PC. There is another cool recipe on the ifttt site to turn on the switch at sunset, I’ve enabled it, and it works like a charm.

Great when you have a light on when you come home rather than using those messy timers. Kids watching to much tv or xbox turn it off from work.