Is there a Zigbee based smart plug that support being turned on when the connected device is power cycled?
The use case I would like to achieve is when using a regular ”dumb” bulb in a lamp connected to a smart plug, and enable turning on the smart plug by toggling the lamp’s on/off switch.
In theory I think it could work. If a smart plug can detect that it goes from having a broken circuit (lamp switch turned off) to a complete circuit (lamp switch turned on), then the smart plug should turn on and allow a current.
It sounds basic, do any of the smart plugs support this in some way?
I have three zigbee bulbs with this behavior in my bedroom. Last night we had a short power outage.
You can not imagine how annoying it is when 30 watts of led power come on at 3 a.m. and the homeassistant still needs it’s 5 minutes to get ready to turn them off again.
Yeah, I think that’s the behavior for at least all Philips Hue and IKEA Trådfri light bulbs, that they turn on when power cycled. Even if not ideal all cases, like in your example, it’s still the behavior I prefer and would like to mimic with smart plugs.
Sometimes I’m too lazy to open the app on the phone or go to the closest connected switch to turn on a specific Zigbee light bulb. Then it’s convenient to just toggle the lamp’s power switch off/on and the light turns on. It would be great if I could do the same for lamps that doesn’t fit Zigbee bulbs and where I need a smart plug.
I only have IKEA’s plugs, and I don’t think it’s possible to do something similar to what I describe with them. But perhaps a smart plug that is able to report power consumption work differently, or if it’s possible to monitor the power cycle by observing power spikes or something?
So, I’ve been exploring this very issue, as I wanted to put a smart plug on my sump pump (with energy monitoring so I can get some idea of how often it’s running). But if there’s a power outage, and my HA is offline, now I have a serious problem.
I did find that the Aqara plug CAN allegedly remember its last state by publishing an MQTT message to it: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/ZNCZ02LM.html
However, as I’m using ZHA (on a HUSBZB-1 stick with older zigbee chipset) I can’t switch to zigbee2mqtt, at least not until I get a new zigbee stick.
(I found this because the Aqara plug isn’t reporting energy metering, and that led me down a rabbit hole that reveals ZHA has a lot of trouble with reporting energy metering )
I’m also using an Innr SP 234 which works great with ZHA but doesn’t appear to support remembering if it should be on or off at powerup.
I also have a Zooz ZEN15 which lets you set power-on behavior too, but that’s Z-Wave … I’m staying away from z-wave for now, until after Matter’s dust settles.
)