Iotawatt Smart Plug?

1

Iotawatt user for >6 months. Monitoring 14 circuits on a 120 panel. Fantastic product/community. I like this product because it is open source, simple, sits entirely behind my firewall with no need for a cloud component, has a greet community of developers. Very thankful to everyone here.

Can anyone recommend a smart plug? Something similar in spirit to the iotawatt. I’m looking for something simple that enables remote access/control (ssh, http, simple api, etc.) and perhaps current monitoring. Most importantly though I’m looking for something that can be configured locally and controlled without a cloud platform or additional app. I do not want google or alexa integration. I have a list of potential products, but I’m curious if anyone here has a good experience to report.

Sam

2

I use Sonoff Pow. There are several versions. I like this one:

The S31 has power measuring capability. I have the older version on my dehumidifier.

I run Tasmota on them.

I run MQTT, Node-RED, influxdb, and Grafana, but other people use Home Assitant or OpenHAB.

It all depends on what you want to get out of it and how much effort you want to put into it.

3

Be careful - the one that has been linked has two options - the LITE version does not do power monitoring.

The other option that i use is the Sonoff POWr2 - fantastic devices - very robust - have about 12 of them around the place and have not had a single issue with them.

Dont be put off with having to flash Tasmota or one of the alternate firmwares - sounds scary but is dead easy - just a couple of cheap bits and pieces to buy and it is a 10 minute job

Craig

Craig

4

I like the actual S31 (you are correct the lite one does not have the power monitoring chip/capability). I have a POW (original one). It is fine and the R2 is probably better, but you have to wire it in, or sacrifice an extension cord. The S31 is a nice size and it looks nice. It is harder to program, since it doesn’t have through-holes for the serial connection. I made a little breadboard with pogo pins that makes it pretty easy.

5

Does this calculate totalized power (i.e. energy usage) internally? If so, over what time period?

6

If you flash it with Tasmota then yes it does - through the standard interface it presents

  1. Days KWh
  2. Previous Days KWh
  3. Total KWh (lifetime or since last Zeroed) (console action to force this) (so you could for instance reset it each week and then use that as a weekly total, or monthly etc etc

Craig

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