Belkin WeMo Switch

I bought three of these recently, and I'm very satisfied. Important advice: do not be in a hurry when you install your first smart switch, because there is a small learning curve, and you'll probably thrash around a bit. Thankfully, I had read the reviews here on Amazon, so I knew to expect the setup to be a little bit trying. But after I learned what to do, it was seamless. When you get your switch, just plug it in to a wall outlet within range of your wireless network, and also plug a lamp into it (for testing). Next, connect your smartphone's wifi to the switch's "temporary" network, which will be called Wemo.Switch.XXX (where XXX are the last 3 digits of the serial number) instead of to your local area network. Then open the Belkin Wemo App on your smartphone (Android 4.0 or later, or iPhone) while connected to the temporary network. The very first time you connect to one of these temporary networks, it will ask you to help the switch get onto your local area network (LAN), so at that time, you need to type in the name of your LAN (called SSID in the documentation) and its password. If you buy 50 switches, you'll only need to do this once, because Belkin will then store the information in the cloud for any future switches in your house to use. After that, the Belkin Wemo App should switch back to your regular LAN, and then should open a screen when you can name the switch--use the name that describes the device you'll be switching (I named mine Bird Lights, Green Up Light, and Red Up Light, for example). Once that's done, you can (if you wish) create rules for the switch, in case you want to use it as a timer, for example. Also, once this is done, if you have an Amazon Echo device, just say "Alexa, discover Belkin Wemo devices", and it should find them within a reasonably short time (perhaps minutes, but in my case, only seconds). Once it has found them, you can command the Echo to turn the switches on/off, by saying, for example, "Alexa, turn on Bird Lights" (or whatever your switch is called) or "Alexa, turn off Bird Lights". It's that simple. I didn't have a single issue with any of the three switches once I understood the procedure. Note also that soon after installation, each switch wanted to get a firmware update. This is new software for inside the switch that gets downloaded from the Belkin website. It will ask you (when you connect to the Belkin Wemo App) if the firmware update can proceed, and when you give the go-ahead, the switch may be unreachable for a few minutes while the firmware downloads and the switch reboots. Give it 20 minutes to be sure--everything should be back after that. I had none of the problems (reported just a few weeks ago) with Echo--it found them quickly and turns them either on or off as requested. I also put two devices in a group (using the Belkin Wemo App), and the Echo lets me turn them on/off all at once using the group name. Good product. Worth the staggering $40+ per switch cost for those few devices that have special needs. In my case, that was one set of lights that I wanted to come on at sunrise and off at sunset (the Bird Lights), and without needing an actual light sensor. Also, two lamps that sit in corners where it's difficult to reach their switch. I turn them off later at night to prepare my eyes for bedtime--so the smart switches allow me to turn them off without having to climb over furniture just to reach the physical switches of the lamp. Yay for home automation, Amazon Echo, and Belkin Wemo. Read more

I really wanted to like this product. I keep a Slingbox set up attached to a cable box at my parents's house, as I tend to travel around a bit and don't want to pay for another TV service at my own apartment. Since my slingbox is rather old, it tends to lock up at times and require a power cycle to get back in a working state. So I bought this as it was cheaper than most other network-control power switches on the market and seemed pretty simple to set up and use. It worked great, exactly as I was hoping, for the first month or so. It was pretty simple to set up, and worked flawlessly whenever I needed to use it. However after a month or two of use, it suddenly stopped working. Trying to do anything in the wemo app didn't respond, so I was SOL regarding trying to use my device. Eventually when I got back to my parents house, even on the local network the device wouldn't work. I ended up having to do a manual factory reset of the device in order to get it back and usable. After the factory reset, it worked fine. However, my biggest complaint, is the Wemo app's lack of having any form of account management. I'm currently nowhere near my parents house, and my phone died so I had to get a new one. With my new phone, when I installed the Wemo app, theres no way for me to recover my old list of devices. The only thing the app lets me do is add new devices connected to my local network. However since I'm nowhere near my Wemo switch, that is impossible, and so I'm once again without access to controlling my device. If they added the ability to recover our devices remotely, this review would instantly go back to a 4 star review. For a device that's intended purpose it to allow you to control it from anywhere in the world, not having a way of re-setting up access to it when remote is a huge flaw in their design. TLDR: device works well enough, however the lack of ability to setup/add your WeMo switch on a new device unless you're physically at the device is a huge design flaw that keeps this device from being useful. Read more