Recommendations Zigbee Smart Plug (UK) w/ Energy Monitoring

Hardware
21

:smiley:

It’s possible that the relay is rated at 20A, but I wouldn’t trust them with any more than 10A anyway. Although, looking at the telemetry more closely, there are occasionally spurious measurements of around 22A, 350V and 4.5kW!

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So whats the consensus are these ok?

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If you mean the Ajax zignito plugs:
Mine have been fine – nothing has tripped – although I haven’t had a voltage measured over 244V so can’t vouch for the 250V trip being fixed in the firmware or not.
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24

My 4 have been fine so far, but I’ve also set them to “always on” and the button is disabled. They usually read in the range 244V to 251V but sometimes higher. However, they don’t output any energy readings, but I can integrate the power in HA using the integration helper.

TBH, I think it might depend on exactly which hardware implementation and which firmware you get. So it’s a bit pot luck.

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Most of the suggestions in this post are now in the range of £28-35 for one plug.

Are these the cheapest UK ZigBee plugs with ZigBee and power monitoring?

The one on AliExpress is reasonable at £8-10 a unit, but there are reports that it only exposes a live power usage but not total energy consumption. Which some have mentioned isn’t useful. Is there a way around this with HomeAssistant?

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Yes - use the Riemann sum integral helper to convert power to energy

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27

I recently picked these ones up and it gives me a Summation delivered. I think this is the one you’re looking for? Also gives active power and some others.

28

Has anyone tried these? 4 plugs for £30 which seems to be the cheapest you can get in the UK right now, but no mention of the chipset etc on the lisitng. I might just take a punt and see how it goes.

Update for anyone who comes here in the future - these switches work great

1 Like
29

Based on one of the photos (that says “Woolley”), possibly the same as these:

and then based on the SA-003 model number from the Amazon page, perhaps these? Still no mention of chipset though.

Note there is no mention of energy monitoring (this might not be an issue for you).

30

Thanks!

Naive i know but aside from knowing what my devices consume, why would I need energy monitoring? It doesn’t actually help me save energy other than choosing to change how long the device is powered?

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There is no other need other than knowing what your devices/appliances consume. In terms of energy saving, I now know what the different washing machine modes use and which one actually uses the least energy. Same with lots of other appliances that have different modes. If that’s not what you’re interested in that’s fine – there are plenty of things I use plug sockets for that I’m not interested in the usage, just want to control on/off.
The thread is titled “w/ Energy Monitoring” so I thought it prudent to point out for anyone else following the link.

32

Off Topic: You could use the energy monitoring to asses if a certain state is true. I’ve used an energy-monitoring ZigBee plug to determine if I’m at my computer. If my monitor is drawing power than it’s likely I’m sat at my desk.

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33

Interesting idea, thanks

34

I bought these a week or so ago and they turned up the other day. Just got to test them out an unfortunately there is no power monitoring with them which is a shame.

I’m replacing my WiFi smart plugs with ZigBee but would really want power monitoring on them. I can’t believe the prices for single ZigBee plugs with power monitoring though!!

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Yes I bought these and they come up in ZHA as SA-003 which means no power monitoring sadly

36

I’ve bought (Zigbee / Power monitoring) plugs from Ajax Online and Ali Express and here are my findings:-

They are fundamentally all the same plug, and get identified in Home assistant as a variant of the TS011F plug, but there are some differences!

The first Ajax plug I bought a few months ago was the

TZ3000_1h2x4akh

It has power monitoring, both live and total summation:-

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The second plug from Ajax bought more recently immediately looked physically different to the first plug, and doesn’t fit in a UK socket very nicely. The square shape slightly obstructs the on/off switch.

Its sub type was slightly different and reported as TZ3000_okaz9tjs

And as at time of writing, its these versions that Ajax are selling. They also come with a strange side effect, that the total summation delivered is just wrong (it started like this):-1:

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And finally, I turned to Ali Express and picked up a 4 pack of these:-

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804759592042.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.5.88d71802ggygDT&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa4itemAdapt&_randl_shipto=US

They also turned out to be TZ3000_okaz9tjs variant (same as the later Ajax), but didn’t have the strange summation bug, and have worked flawlessly so far:-

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Also, because of the round shape, they fit in uk sockets perfectly. Infact a tiny tiny part of the plug body just clips the very lowest part of the on/off switch so you can’t turn the socket off by mistake. Whether that was by design, or fluke, I don’t know.

So personally, I’d steer away from Ajax as they are just reselling TS011F plugs from china at 4 times the price.

One last note. At time of writing, you do need a local quirk to get the okaz9tj variant working. iirc, I got it from this thread:-

But it looks like it might get official support soon as the PR for its support has done now.

2 Likes
37

I have a load of Hive Active plugs from before I had HA. They work perfectly with Z2M, without the need for the Hive hub and are working as routers. They also display energy usage.

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Are these fully supported in Z2Mqtt?

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Unfortunately I’m not sure, as I’ve only ever used them via ZHA.

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Oh well, they’re cheap enough for a gamble and maybe I can add support if not.

Edit : just arrived and tested so no long term testing but with the latest edge version of zigbee2mqtt they work and are getting power values.

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