Lowest price I could find for a smart Wi-Fi plug.
Was $19.78
Plug in Adaptor to Convert Appliances to Smart
Use with App, Google Home & Alexa from anywhere
Program On Off and Timing
IFTTT to work with other Smart Products
Includes USB charger
Fully supported Smart App with 24 hour support
does it have a power monitor?
no
thanks, i bought these last time they were posted and haven't worked out how to get them in hassio.
Instructions from not a bargain that worked for me:
You will need a Raspberry Pi 3B or potentially another computer running linux. I didn't manage to get it to work with a Raspberry Pi Zero W.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=232709
https://github.com/ct-Open-Source/tuya-convert
I am not sure if there are two different internal versions of the Brilliant Smart Switch as I found the following template worked:
{"NAME":"Brilliant","GPIO":[0,0,0,0,0,21,0,0,0,52,90,0,0],"FLAG":0,"BASE":18}Others found a different template worked.
Then you've got to input them to Home Assistant as mqtt devices I believe. This video (though rather annoying) helped me with that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2IUIUnxjUY
Yesterday setup a hass.io on a rpi3.
Flashed three brilliant wifi plugs, and two smart dimmers tonight.
Still need to configure them and add them to hass.io
If not going the Tasmota route, connect them with the Tuya app and use the Hassio Tuya component.
can you tell me what is the difference between tasmota and tuya?
and which is better?
Also why people flash it
when they can just use it with google home/alexa?
does it still work with google home/alexa
after you flash it?
@pinkybrain: Tasmota is a custom firmware that basically eliminates the Tuya component so you can't use the Tuya app any more - only via a platform like Home Assistant. However, it means it no longer relies on Tuya's cloud which is good from a performance and security perspective (as least from some people's perspective).
If you flash it, it won't work natively with Google Home - you'd need to have Google Assistant integrated into Home Assistant.
Most people will find it easier to stick with Tuya (plus you won't void your warranty)
@Darkscythe: if you use it with google home, does it still go over the tuya cloud?
or is that just when you using the Brilliant app?
Is home assistant better than just using google home directly?
and why?
@pinkybrain: Yep, all via the Tuya Cloud whether you use the Brilliant App or Google Home.
Home Assistant isn't better - it's just a lot more powerful but also much more complicated. For most people, Home Assistant is overkill.
Home Assistant isn't better
Depends on how you define better.
Yes, it is a lot more powerful.
Yes, it is a lot more complicated.
Yes, for most people it is overkill.
But the big ticket with Home Assistant is that it is LOCAL control. Excepting any cloud integrations you CHOOSE to add (Google, Alexa, Kasa, Tuya, etc), you don't need an internet connection for it to work or for you to control it locally. You also get added privacy/security from this (if that matters to you.)
This is also one reason why people re-flash these with things like Tasmota.
@Chandler: Yeah was going to say the main selling point is the Local control. Every other solution stops working if your internet stops working. Which isn't problematic for a lot of people, but is a benefitial factor.
I have one of these but I didn't need to flash it. I use HomeBridge though.
if you flash it does it still work with google home/alexa?
Why need to flash it?
To get it to work with Apple HomeKit.
if you flash it does it still work with google home/alexa?
Thanks, I bought one because you were able to do this. Works brilliantly (is that a pun? :P)
Can these be flashed OTA like the genio light bulbs? If so which method do I use? I want to add them to home assistant.
If I'm reading this correctly though - I need to have a Raspberry Pi to be running constantly so that it can interpret, act on the commands… is that correct?
If you're using Home Assistant, then yes. The device running that (Raspberry Pi/NAS/Computer) must be running to interpret the commands.
The alternative is to use a cloud based service like Tuya that should have some in built commands to run off. That will just require the device to be able to contact the internet (home assistant only requires local network connection).
as they look like a carbon copy, i'm assuming these are a rebrand of the MIrabella Geino which i'm sure is a rebrand of a generic Chinese brand, has anybody successfully paired these to the Genio app?
Yes and no. There seems to be a slight difference - these actually sit higher than the Mirabella Genio plugs which prevents them interfering with plugs next to it. Both work with the Tuya app so I'd guess it'd probably pair with Genio but not 100% sure.
Ours has worked flawlessly. Simple device but was easy to set up and operate.
I got one of the TP Link ones from Amazon the other day, and though useful, it's bloody massive. I like the form factor of this.
Geez, you must be the life of all the parties.
He might be implying that size DOES MATTER. wink wink
Good to know tempura, cheers.
Also for the record I haven’t seen you state this over and over again (haven’t looked at or seen your comment history), but I do appreciate you commenting it again so I and others know in this post.
Helpful unpaid information for others shouldn’t be negged, people get a bit precious about wording though so maybe italics can be blamed for the perceived schooling tone?
Is the USB charger also Wi-fi controlled?
No
USB charger is always-on
Thank you :)
Plug a second smart plug into the first one, use the USB on the second one and do your remote switchwork on the first. :D
No, and that's the best part IMO - You can have an always on USB device powered from that outlet. If you want switched USB power you can always use another USB adapter running off the AC output. I have my echo dot plugged into the USB so it can take the voice commands when the AC is off, then turn on the switch which has a powerboard with my amp, xbox, tv etc.
Officeworks sells this too. Price match for extra 5% off. These plugs are great.
I called Officeworks and bought four with the price match and the extra 5% discount, total $57 delivered same day!
Was it your local store you called? Was it still an online order, or can the store sent it with free delivery?
I called the online order service. I received the plugs and cannot get them to connect to the app at all, useless. I can see they are connected to my 2.4ghz wifi network but the app will never pair. Gonna take em back and swap for TP-Link.
Do these use the Smart Life app?
It uses an app by Brilliant which is a copy of Smart Life app. I haven't tried but I think you can use Smart Life app.
Yes you can add these to Smart Life, that's what i use for all mine.
I can’t think what I would use it for? I can just switch whatever I need on when I’m home?
I've got a couple of Sonoff WiFi plugs, but they usually only come out during summer to switch the pedestal fans / xmas lights on and off.
Be interested to hear what others use them for.
I use it for my iron. Mainly because the power point is away from reach, also to turn it on with voice control from another room to get it warming up
I have one to turn off the dish washer when not doing a cycle to stop kids from messing with it. 1yr olds love beeping buttons.
This question is literally in every post about a smart-plug.
Have a look at some of the TP-Link HS100 threads.
FWIW, mine are controlling garden lights, either on a sunset schedule, or linked to a smart switch because where they're plugged in is difficult to reach.
No, I don't use this "in the outdoor". The lights are outside, but the plug is inside.
Do you have some fetish for writing in italic to sound witty? I swear every post you comment on you get negged for being a twat.
@unleashthepain: I used up all my neg votes in this deal post. I've put a reminder in tomorrow to come back and do the rest.
i turn off my slow cooker if running late,,
I use it to turn on lamps inside the house for when I come home from work after dark. Works a treat.
Great for Christmas trees, means you don’t need to get behind the tree to turn off.
Out of interest, what are people using these for? They seem like a cool idea, but I can't think of a good use for one since most devices still need to be switched on on the device after they've been switched on at the wall.
Yeah, my thoughts too. I'm interested to hear the use cases.
I use mine to remotely turn on the (slightly noisy) fan that cools my beer lines in my home bar. That way I can come home after a hard day's work and pour the perfect beer straight away.
I can only think of floor lamps or outdoor fairy lights.
Or perhaps an old school radio to give the impression that someone's at home.
I use one to turn my server PC on and off. I set the bios to resume after power failure. So at 11pm the server shuts down and then the switch turns off and at 9.30am the wifi switch turns on and the computer boots up by itself.
I also have one turn a heater in the bathroom on and off in the morning.
Thank you for the tip about server. After getting the TP link HS110, I now realise my server adds about a dollar a day (about 3kw/day) to my electricity bill, can use your trick about bios to set a schedule on off and halve the usage.
However, I am bit hesitant on yanking power from the running home server every night. Are you running scripted shutdown prior to turning off the plug?
@bluehalk: In the windows task scheduler I created a task to shutdown the PC 10 minutes before the plug turns off. To allow for any updates or delays.
I used Action: shutdown s -f -t 0
Excessive electricity use was the exact reason I did this.
@dansblackcat: Check if your computer can auto start itself at a set time - in the bios you should have something like an auto power on time, or start due to RTC Alarm, and can then set your desired start time. Would work fine when you're starting it automatically at a set time each day.
@dansblackcat: If you're shutting it down automatically via a scheduled task, why would the BIOS classify it as a loss of power?
@magic8ballgag: It doesn't.
But when you have a smart switch that turns off the power it does when the switch turns the power back on.
@dansblackcat: I am actually using ESXi as a hypervisor and it is running my pfsense, NAS, ubuntu and windows vms. Shutting down the server means I lose internet connectivity, I would still have a local wifi in the house but no internet without pfsense. Getting all the VMs and hypervisor to play nice with each other and shutdown can be complicated, that's why I have not bothered with it. I will just have to figure out the scripted shutdown of esxi with all the VMs and autostart with the server start.
@bluehalk: I pretty much have the same setup and am researching ways to accomplish this, please let me know if you find anything that isn't too much of a hack-job.
@magic8ballgag: Here is what I am thinking.
Configure clean shutdown
- Shutting down and power on VMs with ESXi is easy, just setup the autostart and shutdown in ESXi host management.
- Setup a cronjob from Ubuntu VM to issue poweroff command to esxi host (ssh root@server2 "poweroff")
Configure power on
I have not figured out how to do this yet. Mainly because my server is headless and does not have GPU installed, so I cannot access bios configuration until I attach a GPU. (Threadripper does not have IPMI).
Set a schedule for smart plug to turn off and turn on at set time.
Powering it on is something I need to figure out once I can access my BIOS to see the available options.
@bluehalk: I see, I think where I'm stuck is initiating a shutdown command to my host, as I only have a FreeNAS VM running on it at this point.
My server has iLO, which would normally do the job although unfortunately doesn't include power management settings due to limitations of the hardware.
@magic8ballgag: Use Taskjob of FreeNAS to initiate the poweroff command to ESXi. I am using xpenology (Synology) as the NAS VM but do have ubuntu VM as well to play with.
https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/9.3/freenas_…
The command should be something like "ssh root@ESXiHost "poweroff"" (ESXi Poweroff https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1013193)
@bluehalk: I'll give that a go, thanks for the tip!
Now I just need to sort out the other half of the equation: powering the host back on at a set time. I'm curious if one of these smart plugs connected to a UPS would do the trick?
I got one for an electric blanket with dumb controls, Miss Google warms the bed up an hour or 2 before hoping into it.
Another good use as well would be the home theatre set-up - when not in use kill the power to everything, remove standby power usage and reduce fire risk.
These use more power than standby ai believe.
Specs for this smart plug indicate <0.9W. If you have a home theatre system with TV, receiver, media player, Blu-ray, powered sub, X-Box/PS4/Switch and whatever else, I think all those items combined will use a lot more than 0.9W standby power.
@PinzVidz: My home theatre has one attached with the Tasmota firmware, when on standby according to my watt meter my home theatre uses 60w, so <1w is much better and saves me reaching behind the cabinet fishing for the wall socket
when on standby according to my watt meter my home theatre uses 60w
60w is not standby, that's running.
Specs for this smart plug indicate <0.9w
That is the USB standby power
Standby Power: <0.9W USB Charger: 1 x 5V 1500mA
They do not publish the power consumption for the device.
If you have these to save standby power depending on your appliances you're potently using more power with a device like this than without.
These will use use 4-5 watts (the TP-Link HS100 uses 3.68w)
A TV that's turned off needs to draw 0.3 watts or less to comply with EU legislation so if you are only using this on something like a TV and DVD player then you are using more power than you would if you didn't have the switch
Would be an interesting exercise to determine the difference in fire risk between an el-cheapo WiFi plug and (possibly) much better quality home theater equipment :-)
We use one of those "green" power boards with an IR sensor to isolate home theater equipment when not in use.
Google warms the bed up an hour or 2 before hoping into it.
Electric blankets don't need that long to heat up a bed!
They are warm after about 20 minutes.
I was also wondering about this. Setup some of our lights and electric blankets to turn on/off with those simple digital timers. Can't immediately see the need to be able to control them remotely or via a digital assistant. What if you forget?
Control remotely but still set up the safeguards to turn off/on at the appropriate times - might be useful.
Controlling lights, fans etc by the app or with Google assistant.
Remote control of devices (e.g. check from work that you turned off the iron).
Charge a phone overnight without overcharging.
With Tasker, basically anything.
Check the many other threads for smart plugs where this gets asked every time they're posted. e.g. TP-Link HS100 threads.
One thing that I use it for that I don't hear mentioned a lot is preventing phantom power usage. It's the first link before my home entertainment power board, and another one before my computer power board. I have them scheduled to turn off at midnight every night and also use presence sensors to turn them both off if no one is at home.
These things are phantom power use.
You might find that your home entertainment and computer use less power in standby then these things use when they are running.
There's a chance that's true for my PC, but definitely not my home entertainment system. 7 channel receiver, 160+ watt subwoofer, 65" TV, PS4 Pro, PSVR, nVidia Shield. Low power WiFi connection definitely lower draw than all that in standby :)
Switching off the power to my entertainment system throws out the sequence on my Harmony remote because when power returns inputs are defaulted to different ones than it thinks it's on.
The standby power is the price I pay for convenience I guess. Luckily it's not that much.
These direct wifi devices are currently very inefficient, they keep the radio on too long sucking an Amp and crappy 240v stepdown for the power supply.
They can easily draw more than devices in standby. Got to be careful and test how much the actual standby power is.
It's a bit of a problem since all the low standby green requirements are being undone by inefficient home automation devices.
Website says standby power is <0.9W . Since these are products are RCM certified, then I believe they that value is correct.
0.9W = 0.0009kW
0.0009 x 30c/kWh = 0.027c/hour = 0.648c/day = $2.37/year
I'm sure standby power for a TV, TV box, AV receiver amounts to more than 0.9W standby.
BTW, I got 2 of these last night and tried it on my column heater. Plug didn't melt so I'm happy!
I use mine to:
To turn on/off lamps around the house. Many of them do not accept smart bulbs, so this is a good way to do it.
An even if they accept smart bulbs, you invest $15 in one of these and then only need to but regular led bulbs for the lamps from then on. No need to invest on smart bulbs anymore for those lamps anymore.
these are great. i flashed ours (https://github.com/ct-Open-Source/tuya-convert) and control via homeassistant