Recommended Wifi Plugs?

Hardware
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Hi all,

I’m new to home automation and bumped into HA as a possible solution :slight_smile:

I’m looking for a setup to control a couple of devices (I see HA has support for them) but also a couple of wifi plugs to control some lights.

There’s a bewildering number of choices for those plugs :smiley: so I was wondering if there were some recommended brands? Or maybe brands to steer clear of?

I’m looking for wifi-only - nothing that “phones home” to a central server or requires an account. So everything will work for people inside the house even if there’s no internet connection.

Thanks for your help and your time in reading this!

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Which continent are you on?

Do you feel you would be capable of this?

If the answers are ‘Australia’ and ‘Yes’ then you cant go past these:

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Wi-Fi is not your only option then, Wi-Fi & Zigbee use the crowded 2.4 GHz radio space.
Zwave was designed for local control in the 900 MHz space with security, signal reach, & long battery life in mind. ZWave devices are region-specific due to the different frequencies used, but I have bought some of my US devices from Chinese suppliers to reduce cost.

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It’s recommended to keep Wifi Devices at a minimum. I strongly recommend Osram’s Zigbee Smart Plugs ( https://www.osram-lamps.com/ecatalog/smart-home/smart-home-products-with-zigbee-technology/smart-home-components/smart-plug/index.jsp)
1 Wifi Zigbee Gateway Device and you’re good to go. You can also block Osram’s Gateway to access Internet, and they will still work great within HA.

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Can you elaborate on this recommendation?

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I’m not a big fen of osram due to just one reason - they do not support power measurement. So now I migrated almost all of the smart plugs to Neo Coolcam. I’m using z-Wave (as I have Smarthings hub), but Neo also have WiFi modules.

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I have Neo Coolcam Z-Wave plugs & PIR Motion Sensor I ordered from AliExpress in China. Unfortunately the particular US models I got were not in OpenZwave or the HA fork of it.
They are discovered properly in the OpenHAB zwave binding though.

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8

The more (active) Wifi Devices are connected to the same Channel the more that channel is used and devices might start waiting for their “airtime” to communicate, which results in poor Wifi Performance.
This also depends on how active Wifi Devices are of course (read: do they generate a lot of traffic?).

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There’s the important qualifier. If flashed with custom firmware, like Tasmota, Espurna, ESPHome, etc, then the answer is “not very active at all”.

Given that the topic is about WiFi plugs, the traffic they produce is limited to the packets sent for turning the device on/off and any periodic status reports (whose frequency can be specified). The payload for turning the plug on/off fits into a TCP packet. The total transaction of transmission and acknowledgement is a mere blip on the radar.

If you use wireshark to examine network traffic in the average home, it’ll reveal a surprisingly active environment that is ably handling the workload. The addition of several dozen more packets is unlikely to even be noticeable.

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I have Sonoff Plugs and Shelly 1s flashed with Tasmota (“no phone home”) and they just do what they should, no problems.

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Thanks to everyone for the replies - it’s given me a lot of great stuff to look at! :slight_smile:

Fwiw I’m in the UK - if that makes any difference to recommendations, power standards, etc.