Voltson Smart Plugs (by Etekcity), early experience

Posted on
Mon Sep 10, 2018 6:16 am
ar26pt2 offline
Posts: 25
Joined: Jan 23, 2014

Voltson Smart Plugs (by Etekcity), early experience

I had to pick a couple of these up given the price and reviews. They are a hubless wifi plug with quick setup, support with their VeSync app, IFTTT and Alexa/Google. I am also looking for a way to control a couple devices behind a private NAT unavailable ip on a fixed wireless internet location (weekend cabin) and thought these may do the trick.

So far only set up on standard wired internet with good wifi signal:
- nice form factor, small
- very easy to set up
- good as a "shared device" for non indigo users
- very reliable on/off via VeSync app (1% failure rate that I can see)
- IFTTT webhooks commands work pretty well (10% failure rate or so, almost always when passing multiple commands rapidfire). Sometimes takes 5s or so for a command to get bounced around and executed
- No on/off state feedback via ifttt to indigo (although maybe with the httpd server plugin this is possible)
- Respond to ping, about 80ms (vs 20 or so for other devices here)
- scheduling device via app. Not sure if the schedule is pushed to device in advance or whether sched is "streamed" to device in realtime.
- no native "power cycle" command, so don't use it to power cycle a gateway (or your wifi AP)
- i made a power cycle script with ifttt commands in indigo and passed 3 OFF commands -30s wait - 3 on commands and that works well.

Next steps:
- test schedules when knocked offline
- test behind LTE network

Note I also just saw the TP-Link Device plugin http://www.indigodomo.com/pluginstore/188/ and some ability to local control TP link devices. I may buy one and try it. Also to see which can stay more alive on a private NAT ip address.

And for posting to IFTTT there is a plugin here http://www.indigodomo.com/pluginstore/49/ however I just used my own little python script (usually the case is I spend hours learning to script something then stumble across a plugin someone just made :shock: )

Aaron

Posted on
Sat Dec 08, 2018 11:37 pm
diefledermaus offline
Posts: 17
Joined: Feb 07, 2015

Re: Voltson Smart Plugs (by Etekcity), early experience

These have the one of the chipset from these folks.
https://www.espressif.com/en

found this code to talk to them, have not run it myself.
https://github.com/tylergets/python-ves ... ync/api.py

also this may help
https://www.espressif.com/en/smart-home

Posted on
Tue Feb 12, 2019 3:57 pm
sarahcat offline
Posts: 144
Joined: Apr 16, 2011

Re: Voltson Smart Plugs (by Etekcity), early experience

I'm not a very good coder, but I am learning Python. How would I integrate this code to communicate with the Voltson devices using Indigo? I've used user contributed plug-ins, but I have never actually utilized Python code for Indigo.

I am using the Voltson devices with Alexa, which allows me to use Alexa as the integration point for everything, but I prefer to have Indigo be the integration point, but It's not a huge inconvenience, either way. It's more a matter of the endpoint plug in devices for seasonal appliances like heaters and holiday lights being under $10 and I can leave them associated with the devices for that amount. Most of my network is Insteon and the basic plug-in is almost $50 when not on sale. The TP-Link are $20 but the Etekcity's Voltson's are less than $10 and for devices that for which I don't need robust status, they seem to be decent.

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