First off, I'm not using these devices with the ESPHOME Firmware. I'm using Tasmota, as I already am familar with it for many of my other devices, and want to take advantage of mqtt, which from my understanding ESPHOME doesn't support. When I saw this on amazon and saw it was compatible with tasmota , I thought I'd try it out. Setup was easy with ESPHOME. I added it to my network, and then proceeded to flash tasmota. Upon flashing tasmota, I was immediately greeted with the plug turning itself on and off every 2 seconds. Hmm, I thought, could the flashing have gone wrong? I unplugged it, adn tried plugging it in again. Same thing. Then I looked online and found the problem. Included in the manufactures website, was this. Flashing Tasmota To convert the KAUF Smart Plug to Tasmota, simply download tasmota.bin.gz, browse to the plug’s IP address in a web browser, and use the web page to flash. Important Note: Do not have anything plugged into the PLF12 when Tasmota is flashed. The relay output on the PLF12 is the same pin as the default LED output for Tasmota. When Tasmota is first installed, the relay will turn on and off every second or so, because Tasmota thinks it is blinking a light. The recommended Tasmota template is: {"NAME":"Kauf Plug","GPIO":[0,320,0,32,2720,2656,0,0,321,224,2624,0,0,0],"FLAG":0,"BASE":18} adding the template fixed the problem. Boy this would have been nice to know in the included manual. Took about 10 minutes of googling to figure this out, all while i was thinking i messed something up. ANYWAY, the outlet controller does work great, and power monitoring is also great. I'm using one for a fridge, one for a fan, one for a light, and one I have yet to install. I fully embrace the LOCAL non internet connected design of tasmota and esphome. I am grateful that there are relativity cheap devices like this that support local, non cloud connected access to devices in the home. To the manufacture: if you read this, please put the tasmota template in your instructions for setup/flashing Read more
These smart plugs are pretty much tinkerer's paradise. They work with ESPHome right out of the box, and likewise work with Home Assistant. Firmware Updates are delivered regularly via ESPHome. The Web Interface is useful, providing all sorts of adjustments to make the most out of the plug, and allows for the plug to operate completely standalone if there is no Home Assistant installation in use. All you need to set this thing up is a Wi-Fi Device and a Web browser. That's it. No apps. No cloud. No Internet. No account. No nonsense. Likewise, I'm not worried about some company going under and the smarts magically failing, because the firmware for these things is open source. With Home Assistant, the responsiveness of the plug is instantaneous. There is no annoying Cloud-brokered delay, or Bluetooth setup delay. The plug turns on or off the absolute second you hit the switch or your automation triggers... unless your Wi-Fi signal to the plug is really bad. The only thing I wish these plugs supported is WPA3 SAE WI-Fi networks. As I understand it, this is more of a limitation of ESPHome and the Arduino base, and not something that wasn't implemented by the developer. Read more
Great plugs for the price and you can use the built in web interface to manage it, or connect it with Home Assistant and have even more control and more stats than you could ever dream of! It handles up to 10A of power. I have 4 and monitor my Washingmachine, Dishwasher, Desktop and Network Server. I can view in REALTIME the power draw at any given moment. Perfect for your automations as well. The designer allows you to flash Tasmota if that's more your speed and it's super easy to connect with. Read more
Would not recommend. I was unable to connect to the broadcast Wi-Fi network, and when I did, it wouldn't work as advertised in the instructions. This was the case for three out of the four plugs I received. After 3 days of tinkering, I was finally able to flash Tasmota onto one of the plugs and once I did, it worked great (but at that point, it's not even the product advertised). I reached out to the creator, which kudos to him for actually responding to my email, and he suggested that I create a temporary access point for the fallback network that the device is configured to connect to by default, but at that point I was done wasting my time. For reference, I'm on a MacBook Pro M1 laptop running Sonoma. The firmware that shipped with the device was v2.08 and, as of writing this review, the latest is v2.10. For the one device I got working, I needed to first update it using Over The Air (OTA) firmware and then I flashed the Tasmota. Read more
Amazing product. I have a few old Feit plugs that I was able to use tuya-convert on. But the firmware has since been locked down. Even Sonoff is moving to not silk screening tx/rx. These plugs couldn't be simpler to use, connect to the access point, setup WiFi, add to Home Assistant. I intended to run my own esphome firmware on these, but seeing how polished the OEM firmware is I'll stay with it. They actually publish the full yaml files and binaries, try getting that out of any other vendor. These are exactly what home automation should have been. If nothing else (HASS is down) there's a web page you can use to toggle things. With the new Voice Assistant you can do everything off line these days, including voice. Products like these are essential to that ecosystem. Well done engineer(s) at KAUF. Read more
