So I bought a 3 pack of the WeMo Smart Plugs in the hopes of yelling “Alex turn Bedroom Light Off” before bedtime. Instead of buying a Clapper, of which I’ve never seen in real life.
Which was probably a better idea seeing as the WeMo Smart Plugs are notorious for disconnecting from Wifi or having general issues connecting with HomeKit.
There are tons of community posts about this issue on the WeMo community forums.
Unfortunately you can’t view the posts unless you register an account. Good luck, as their registration page is also broken.
I had bought the WeMo Smart Plugs based on The Wire Cutters Best Smart Switch review, of which WeMo is number one.
If you read the Disqus comments, you’ll see that’s not really the case. Most of the comments talk about how the WeMo is unreliable.
Oh and you’ll notice that sometimes after the WeMo is registered as a device in the mobile app. It’s unsecured Wifi is still active and you can still connect to it.
Anyone interested in the wemo mini please be aware that there is currently a security issue with the latest iteration of hardware. When using the latest version the setup network stays active after the device is setup. It may go away at first but will turn back on after the device loses power or loses connection to your router.
Belkin has told me they had a similar issue with their previous hardware last year and was able to fix it with a firmware update, but there is currently no fix for the current version.
Early replies from their technical support claimed that the setup network is “inactive” after setup, and that although it may broadcast the network no one can perform any actions with the device over this network after setup.
This is not true. The setup network can be connected to and the device can be operated by anyone connected to the setup network.
If you currently have the device, as of Feb 22nd 2019, there is currently no solution but to unplug your devices.
Please see details on the issue in their support form.
https://disq.us/url?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommunity.wemo.com%2Ft5%2FWEMO-Hardware%2FWifi-Setup-network-broadcasting-constantly%2Fm-p%2F51663%2Fhighlight%2Ftrue%23M19326%3AZZvw-24FQM8kz7xZwJQf-Dtokcc&cuid=1030491
For now I’m going to do some research but would love to know what others are using and having success with!