Hi all,
Question:
Are there WiFi Smart Plugs available in Australia with Energy Monitoring which do not require me to sign up to vendor-clouds and simply work with Home Assistant out of the box (no flashing)? I would really like to start out with as little issues as possible to keep my wife on my side in this endeavour.
Somewhat related question:
Should I even bother starting with WiFi or just wait for good Matter devices to hit the market in ~half a year? If they implement the Matter standard, HA should be able to use them w/o further flashing/praying/jumping-through-hoops?
Background:
I am just starting out on my smart-home journey. To get my wife interested, I want to start with some small additions which will show us useful information without breaking the bank. I already ordered some Shelly EMs to monitor our solar panels and energy consumption (how much do we take and feed into the grid, how much do we consume of our own solar energy and how much do we consume overall). We would also like to get a better understanding of how much energy our big appliances use (stove - Shelly; dishwasher, fridge, washing machine, server rack). I am therefore looking for a smart switch with energy monitoring. I have fairly decent WiFi coverage and most of my computers/laptops are connected via GbEthernet, so I don’t have all that many devices on WiFi at the moment, so congestion should not be an issue. I hope that there are WiFi plugs available as I would like to avoid having to invest in Zigbee/Z-Wave/… at the moment. I also would like to avoid any interferences with the 2.4 GHz WiFi.
Problems:
I like that WiFi plugs seem to be cheap and one can get a set of four for plugs for 69AUD at the local hardware store (https://www.bunnings.com.au/arlec-grid-connect-smart-plug-in-socket-with-energy-meter-4-pack_p0273368). Looking at the integration discussion about the device it seems however that I have to start praying that I receive old enough stock so that I can flash them and then keep on praying that the flashing is successful and the plugs will show all functionality in HA. These Kogan ones seem to have similar issues: https://www.kogan.com/au/buy/kogan-smarterhometm-smart-plug-with-energy-meter-5v-2a-usb-ac-ports-4-pack-kogan/. Unfortunately it seems that even finding a good smart-plug in the forums does not necessarily mean that after a year has passed since the question was asked that the plug is still usable with Home Assistant (e.g. firmware update issues with TP-Link devices).
Looking forward to hear ideas and proposals on what to do.