I recently ran into a pretty annoying situation with Eques Elf smart plugs. While going to set them up after moving homes, I realized the entire cloud service was just gone. The Android app is no longer in the Play store, the websites are gone, and Google Home actions will just error. Without effort, the devices cannot be connected or used at all.
To even reconnect the devices to my network, I needed to grab the mobile app’s apk from online. The devices can be locally controlled by the app but any services like Google Home no longer work without the partner connection.
I’m not entirely surprised by this situation but as I acquired in 2018 it really bugs me that these have such a short lifespan. With that, I’ll be on a mission to make these devices useful again.
While I have not yet used HomeAssistant devices on Google Home, I’m optimistic I’ll recover the full functionality I had before . I’m not yet sure how to make the initial device setup easier for the average HA user.
The device has two setup modes, one of which will broadcast an access point to configuring it. Given the mobile app can configure the device, I’m confident this can be reverse engineered and reproduced provided iamckn’s existing work. That may not provide an “easy to use” setup, and at best would require custom apk installs (whether Eques Elf or a custom app), but it’s a step forward.
Anywho, thanks for reading this little frustration and ambition. If you landed here because you also have Eques Elf devices that stopped working, I hope this helped explain a bit of the situation and can make your devices useful again!
. I’m not yet sure how to make the initial device setup easier for the average HA user.