Starting with the Devices tab, you will see a list of your currently linked devices. In this case I have a motion sensor and a smart plug. On this page you will see the current status of the switched outlet, currently it is off. If it were on the slider would be to the right and it would be lighted blue. Selecting either device brings up a menu for each allowing you to rename the device if you choose. Selecting the motion sensor you are given a few more options to setup. Under Motion Detection you can turn off the device and set sensitivity. It should be noted that the device is not pet friendly. Or at least I was not able to get it to not pick up my sheltie. You can select a schedule mod (more on that later) and see a log of the triggers. Overall I found the sensor to be very quick to sense motion.
With the smart plug menu you can see the current output status, power meter reading, thermal trip point setting and schedules. The meter allows you to set how much power a device is allowed to use and set up alerts to let you know when it reaches a set %. The thermal trip allows you to set a max device temp which will automatically shut off the device when the socket gets too hot. I didn’t really investigate these features since I didn’t have a particular need for them but I can see where they would be helpful, especially say for a space heater that you may want to monitor its power use and have it shut off if it draws too much current.
Next up you can set your actions. These were very easy to set up and quite honestly they should be, they are simple rules. Below I have it set that when motion is detected the switch is turned on. The second rule sends an alert in the app. Again the sliders indicate if the rules are active or not. In this case the playroom rule is off and the test rule is on.
Overall I found the motion sensor was quite reliable at turning on the outlet but found the app to be incredibly slow and sometimes it never updates the current state. Changing the screen and going back will refresh the status, but each screen change often takes several seconds and at times I was left waiting nearly 30 seconds for a change to show.
Another glitch was found after my initial setup. I decided to set these devices up on another network so I reset the devices and started the set up again. The smart plug connected with no trouble at all, but the motion sensor refuses to be found. It is broadcasting its own wireless network and I can connect to this network but I can’t get the app to recognize the device is present. Very frustrating.
Under the settings menu there is an option for scheduling. This ties back to the scheduling tab on each device. Here you can set basic schedules or advances ones. Under basic schedules you can set the days of the week it is active, start and end times as well as frequency using preset frequencies. Advanced is just that; you can select devices to be active any day at any time as often as you like. Once these are set you would just select the schedule of your choice under each device. This would work well for turning on lights when you aren’t home though I would prefer a randomizer so the lights don’t come on every Tuesday at 8:30.
