Zigbee Smart Plug with Power Monitoring?

Hardware
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I’m looking for a few smart plugs which work on Zigbee (ZHA). I’m finding WiFi devices to be less reliable, and my Zigbee mesh is pretty rugged.

But, I need power monitoring. The only one I could find on Amazon which appears to do this is a very pricey one from GE:

For the price of 1-2 of these I could buy another WiFi access point, but I’d rather not go that route just to monitor a few loads in some far-flung locations in my house which are well covered by Zigbee, but not WiFi.

Just wondering whether anyone out there has other recommendations. Thanks!

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I ordered this one today:

(I want make my dishwasher “smart”)

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Nice. Unfortunately I need the North American (120V) version. I did find one for a few bucks more. I ordered one just to try:

The price ended up being about $12 for shipping from and to the US. AliExpress is funny about displaying prices when you first open an item.

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I used the Centralite 7050 RZHAC and 6050 ZHAC Zigbee units for number of years with good success. The company went bankrupt a while back and then resurrected. However, I do not know if they still make and sell these units. You might still find them on eBay. I have one of the Aqara Lumi plugs, it seems to work pretty well. However, I do not have deep experience with it. I have moved the other direction to WiFi devices. I beefed up the WiFi networks and so far so good. I find the Shelly product deliver good function and quality at reasonable price.

However, I still think that Zigbee is more purposed build and might win the reliability race in the long run.

Be cognizant of quality/safety. The GE unit you saw probably is properly UL’ed and such for the US, the CentraLite units were the same. And yes, that adds to cost.

From a power monitoring standpoint, I’m not sure what your goals are, but don’t expect to measure plug loads with any accuracy or consistency over time. Below is an example of the following four plugs monitoring the brewing of a pot of coffee this am.

Aqara Lumi Plug (zigbee)
CentraLite 7050-RZHAC (zigbee)
Shelly Plug US (WiFi)
Shelly 1PM (WiFi)

power-monitor-compare
power-monitor-compare2144×2024 636 KB

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Thanks, good information. I notice it’s hard to tell when searching Amazon, eBay, etc. whether the device supports power monitoring. For example, one of the CentraLite models you reference is available on Amazon, and it does have “Energy Management” as a bullet point, but no clue as to what that means. eBay tends to have even less technical information and fewer reviews and user questions.

For me, accuracy isn’t critical for now. I’m just looking to know if the device plugged in is running or not. But my WiFi plugs are pretty consistent, and seem to match the rated amperage of the pumps I have plugged into them. I’ll test the accuracy on any new devices I try, thanks for pointing that out.

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If any of the plugs are tuya based, you can pull the energy management info out with a bit of hassle, it took me a couple of days but I now can get a notification via pushover which tells me if my son has turned his tv on when it is past his bedtime

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For instantaneous power reading, yes, all will show fairly accurate values. The flag I raised is related to the sampling rate of the devices and using these values to calculate power usage over time. Basic Kilowatt Hours. The point of my picture was to show the possible answers to the question, ‘What did that pot of coffee cost to make?’. As you can see most of the power hungry home appliances we use, use simple power on and off cycling to control things like temperature, cooking power, refrigeration level… This leads to very ‘spikey’ square wave power usages. If a device cycles power several times per minute and the power monitoring device only samples a couple samples per minute, the ‘area under the curve’ is going too often be very inaccurate.

To your point on model numbers, yes, this can be a pain for many IoT devices. A good source for accurate information on Zigbee (and Sonoff wifi) devices are the community maintained databases. They not only show pretty accurate model info as well what capabilities the devices have (THIS IS AN IMPORTANT POINT, MORE COMING BELOW):


If the unit you found on Amazon is a 4256050-ZHAC (BE CAREFUL of model number and letter codes on these Centralite devices, they are very close between models and easy to mistake). There is no picture of the back of the unit, see below I took a picture of one of mine. So for example the Centralite device you found is a Zigbee Dimmer that supports power monitoring (BUT SEE BELOW!)

Here are the original Centralite docs for this device:
https://centralite.readthedocs.io/en/latest/devices/lights/usdimmer.html

Now the ‘gotchas’ that make Zigbee stuff harder than it should be:

  1. Firmware version that the device has in it.

  2. Is it possible in your Zigbee setup/system/hub to upgrade the firmware of devices.

  3. Device handler capabilities in your Zigbee setup/system/hub.

Item 1) Zigbee firmware is ‘pretty’ stable from release, but there are changes. And you can end up purchasing the exact same device from two different batches and end up with different firmware and sometime capabilities. For example a year or so ago, Hue updated all of their bulbs to support setting the power on state of the bulb. Prior to this firmware, if you had a power interruption, when the power came back on, all the Hue bulbs turned on to full brightness. With the updated firmware, you can select the state the bulb turns back on: off, full on, last state.

In my experience with the Centralite units I have, there are some subtle differences in the way their units report power use based on firmware revision. It was not a show stopper, it was just odd that what appeared to be two identical devices delivered data differently. Then I updated the firmware.

Item 2) Okay, so there are different firmware versions. I can update them, right? MAYBE! Updating Zigbee firmware is done ‘over the air’ OTA. This requires that your setup/system/hub : A) support doing OTA. B) Have access to the firmware images for your devices.

The proprietary/all in the family setup/system/hub support OTA firmware for THEIR devices. Hue, Ikea, Aqara are examples I have experience with.

Some third party and open system support OTA firmware for multiple vendors, but they have to have access to the firmware from the device vendor. These solutions are all over the map as to whether a given device can updated.

Samsung SmarThings setup/system/hub, I have found to be the most comprehensive, but it is still not 100%. For example, it has been a while, but I do not think they support Hue. But they support CentraLite, Ikea, OSRAM among others.

ConBee/Deconz, I think so but I don’t know. I bought one of their systems a while back but have as yet tried it.

ZHA Home Assistant, there are working on it. But it has far to go.

Zigbee2MQTT, what looks like a good infrastructure in place. Some vendors, but far from as deep as SmarThings.

So what does this mean? It means that if you want an ‘open’ Zigbee setup/system/hub, you are still probably going to have to buy the device vendors hub just to make sure you have the latest firmware on all of your devices and be ready in case an update comes out.

Item 3) Okay if you are not frustrated enough by the ‘state’ of Zigbee. Grab a tall beer, because you have gotten all of your devices up the latest firmware, life is good. NOPE.

Each setup/system/hub maintains a database of ‘capabilities’ for every device that is supported by this setup/system/hub. Is there a ‘standard’ for these records? Of course NOT. Are the records different between setup/system/hub? YEP!

So for the Centralite 4256050-ZHAC we are discussing:

A) ZHA does NOT support the power reporting function of this device.
B) Zigbee2MQTT DOES support the power reporting function of this device.
C) Samsung SmarThings USE TO support the power reporting, but they removed it!

Life SUX then we die…

Can this database be updated, good news YES. You can request the developers to queue up a change. Or if you are adept, you can write your own ‘handler’ for the device.

Unfortunately, this ASSumes the information about the specific functions of the device has been made public. Here is an example where as yet as far as I know this is NOT true. The Aqara LUMI power switch also has a temperature sensor built into it. This is visible on on the Aqara setup/system/hub. But as far as I know, Aqara has not made this specification public. In Zigbee world, like Bluetooth world, there are public published functions for devices and private functions not published. And unfortunately, to make this point worse, there are incorrectly implemented public standards in some devices. Read about ‘quirks’ in the ZHA system, it way if trying to fix these.

Happy New Year and have lots of :wine_glass:and​:beer: ready while you work on this stuff :grinning:

4256050-ZHAC
4256050-ZHAC3024×4032 1.92 MB

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Thanks for the detailed notes. I guess there’s something for everyone in there, but no one best answer. I may just stick with the (working) IP smart plugs. We’ll see what my AliExpress devices can do.

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Kind of figured my babble might put the fear of zigbee in you :wink:.

On that same theme, just be careful of the loads you put on and the design of the wifi pucks you try. There are accidents waiting to happen, if not already have.

One reason I kind of like the Shelly devices, while they are sourcing from China like everyone else, they seem to still embody that old Soviet era ‘over build it, because it will never be replaced…comrade’

Good hunting! Happy New Year!

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Yes, I noticed that some are rated as low as 300W. Both of my sump pumps pull at least 3A (360W) normally. With a locked rotor it would be much higher. It would smoke those cheap smart plugs!

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I have tried to make the move to zigbee with a power monitoring Aqara plug from Amazon…


and I’m not happy with the results with deconz integration. the numbers are all jacked up and I don’t know how to fix it, unless I can get some help to figure out why the monitor ing numbers aren’t right…

Screen Shot 2021-04-06 at 3.13.06 AM
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power on and off works but with a 75 watt incandescent bulb, the numbers couldn’t be more worthless.

on the other hand, with these plugs I purchased exactly 2 years ago, flashed with tuya convert, have been flawless and work great…

Screen Shot 2021-04-06 at 3.33.02 AM
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and the Aquara plug is super clunky and doesn’t fit in a single plug space like the teckin plugs do. I’m looking for a zwave substitute for the teckin and am not feeling to hopeful at this point.
update after several minutes, the power 3 showed 76 watts, so that’s good, but now to find out what the heck -1 W on power 2 means.

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FYI, when specifially talking about the ZHA integration component for Home Assistant there are loads of related discussions/explainations here about this and the current ZHA limitation of 1 sensor per cluster:

and here

There is also an issue posted to the HA core about ZHA energy consumption sensors not showing up:

All those applies to most Zigbee power plugs or other Zigbee devices with integrated energy meters:

  1. Tuya TS0121 → [Device Support Request] BlitzWolf BW-SHP13 smart plug (aka Tuya TS0121) · Issue #605 · zigpy/zha-device-handlers · GitHub
  2. BlitzWolf BW-SHP13 (OEM version of Tuya TS0121) → [Device Support Request] BlitzWolf BW-SHP13 smart plug (aka Tuya TS0121) · Issue #605 · zigpy/zha-device-handlers · GitHub
  3. Develco Norwegian HAN Adapter (Develco EMIZB-132) → Add support for Develco Products A/S EMIZB-132 Norwegian HAN adapter · Issue #267 · zigpy/zha-device-handlers · GitHub
  4. Develco Prosumer Meter (Develco SMMZB-310101)
  5. Develco Smart Plug Mini (Develco Frient SPLZB-131) → [Device Support Request] Develco Frient SPLZB-131 Smart Plug Mini · Issue #857 · zigpy/zha-device-handlers · GitHub
  6. Immax Plug-230V-ZB3.0 Smart Plug
  7. Innr SP 120 (a.k.a. Innr SP120) → No power consumption readings from Innr smart plug SP120? · Issue #34090 · home-assistant/core · GitHub
  8. Lonsonho 16A Energy Monitoring Plug (OEM version of Tuya TS0121) → [Device Support Request] BlitzWolf BW-SHP13 smart plug (aka Tuya TS0121) · Issue #605 · zigpy/zha-device-handlers · GitHub
  9. SmartThings Smart Plug (UK)
  10. Schwaiger ZHS15 → ZHA plugs - smartenergy_metering > wrong cluster · Issue #44539 · home-assistant/core · GitHub
  11. Rehentele 16A Energy Monitoring Plug (OEM version of Tuya TS0121) → [Device Support Request] BlitzWolf BW-SHP13 smart plug (aka Tuya TS0121) · Issue #605 · zigpy/zha-device-handlers · GitHub
  12. Aqara LUMI lumi.plug → ZHA plugs - smartenergy_metering > wrong cluster #44539

and a possible workaround being working on here

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If you weren’t worried about the monitoring features, do any of you recommend a decent inexpensive zigbee plug?

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I have Zigbee plugs from IKEA, SONOFF, Ledvance and eWeLink. They all work great. Haven’t tried any with power monitoring yet. From what I’m reading above, I guess I won’t be doing so any time soon.

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These? For $10?

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Xiaomi zigbee smart plug is flawless. I got it for 15€.

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I have a couple of these. They work great. But unless there’s an IKEA near you, they charge something like $10 for delivery.

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These have worked great for me. $10 each with 30% coupon as of Sep/22/2021

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Saw your post 12 hours too late. Drats.

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I just received the two Sengled smart plugs from Amazon which Zoriontsu linked, above.

I paired one and it came right up in ZHA. Even without the 30% off, this is a pretty good price for an energy-monitoring Zigbee smart plug.

My only quibble, and it’s probably irrelevant for most people, is that it only shows Watts. The TP-Link WiFi smart plugs I’ve used show the following attributes:

current_power_w: 0
total_energy_kwh: 3.666
voltage: 124.2
current_a: 0.01
today_energy_kwh: 0.026

Obviously the totals aren’t important, since we can track those in HA. Amps can be inferred, but only roughly without voltage. As long as you can get by with just Watts, this looks like a decent device. Especially since I’m trying to get away from WiFi devices and use more Zigbee.