SONOFF S31 WiFi Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring, 15A Smart Outlet Socket ETL Certified, Work with Alexa & Google Home Assistant, IFTTT Supporting, 2.4 Ghz WiFi Only (2-Pack)

Pretty good, but kinda bulgy. Still good

After thunderstorm power outage, the products turns off on its own and doesn’t turn back on. Scheduling on the app doesn’t quite work all the time.hopefully Alexa can take over this. Wouldn’t recommend to put on always need to tbe on device.

I first bought SwitchBot smart plugs thinking they would work with the Core SwitchBot integration with Home-Assistant, extremely disappointed in not only the broken integration, but also the terms of service from a company that has had a lot of recent YouTube praise. Unfortunately, it just shows the known ignorance and total abandonment of values in the name of convenience... Enter HACS and Sonoff; While Sonoff is also doing some data mining it is possible to run the S31 Smart Plugs completely local without the app or the cloud using HACS on Home-Assistant with no fooling with jumpers or fussing with flashing. Several recent HA forum posts and YouTube videos cover the procedure, just look for the most current so you can follow along more easily since the recent changes. Also, Stay away from the S40 if you use Home-Assistant. S31 is the way to go. Deducted a star for the shady terms of service that are getting all too common with IoT products. Otherwise, it would be 5 stars.

These plugs still have the ability to work with TASMOTA. They have to be opened and flashed via serial connections. Theres a few how-tos that show the process. Flashing TASMOTA helps me avoid relying on the cloud since I use Home Assistant on a RPi3.

Easy to disassemble and flash with tasmota, exactly what I was looking for. Works with energy monitoring in home assistant through cloud on factory firmware, or locally on tasmota.

The appeal to this model is the ability to open them and hack them - great for automation. They didnt play nice with my router. 2 of the 4 kept going offline and I had to reset them to get them back.

Using them with Alexa, very reliable, never had a failure/need of reset. Easy setup and Alexa integration with the ewlink app. In the ewlink app you can turn on some features that Alexa do not have but still works with Alexa, additional bonus. E.g automatically turn off the device after xxx time has lapsed since power on, power on state, timers and loop timers. Very useful for my setup, controlling a water pump for my house remotely.

Like many other reviewers, I have purchased this particular switch to install Tasmota on. I use them for energy monitoring, and in some cases their original intent - outlet switching, in my home. I buy whatever pack is cheapest per unit at the time, be it 1, 2 or 4 pack versions. Theyre all the same in my experience. To get them installed with Tasmota, I first tried to solder leads to them. Then I tried to solder pin headers and that was a little bit easier. Im slightly beyond entry level skill with soldering, but I destroyed at least three units in this learning process. I finally graduated to micro-grabber electrical test clips and have ripped through over two dozen conversions now without incident. Lets be frank. Id rather Sonoff just offered Tasmota OS from the get-go, or made these over-the-air flashable. I will settle for nothing less than local control and Im definitely not itching for a new and different cloud solution or app. Id prefer not to hack these devices in the first place and if Sonoff works towards preventing this from a hardware or software standpoint, I will buy no more of them. At the time of this writing (March 2022), this is probably one of the cheapest way to get local energy monitoring and basic 15 amp capable on/off outlet switching. I use Home Assistant for my home automation platform. These are fully compatible with their new energy monitoring dashboard. This provides me with significant insight into my homes energy use, especially now that theyre widely distributed to the overwhelming majority of my outlets. I usually capture between 13-18 kilowatt hours per day, the bulk of my usage. To be clear, I use higher grade energy monitoring switches in mission critical applications (furnace, fridge, etc.), but these are great even for non-mission critical high amp usage scenarios up to 15 amps. Ive pushed some of mine well up to the limits and havent had any major problems or sparks fly. Out of a couple dozen, Ive had one actual device failure. Oddly enough, even with different firmware, different units operate differently on my WiFi. Some stay connected to Wifi 100% of the time, others intermittently connect throughout the day. I dont lose any granular Home Assistant data because of this, nor are they ever inaccessible and fail to turn on/off. I dont have a good answer as to why different units behave differently with the same software. Odd behavior, but it doesnt result in problems. I really cant complain anyway, Im using them well outside of the manufacturers intended use. Build quality is good enough but I wish there was a bit more consistency. Since the majority of buyers are intending to hack these, I really wish they wouldnt cinch down some of the poor-quality screws like they are Shee-Ra or the Hulk. Ive destroyed way more screws than Ive wanted, and thats with the perfect screw removal tool which Ive determined to be a 2.0mm flathead screwdriver. Again, I just wish I could buy a decent quality, super cheap, 15 amp capable smart switch product with the OS of my choice out of the gate. Ive used these to solve VERY REAL problems in my home. From triggering outlets based on other inputs to making serious dents in energy conservation, I believe the $200ish dollars Ive put into these Sonoff S31 units will eventually pay for themselves. Its fairly easy for me when Im paying almost $0.25 per kilowatt hour, others might not have as good of an ROI. If anything, Ive achieved some level of energy usage consciousness. Ive killed and/or automated quite a few parasitic energy draws I wasnt even aware of, and have easily increased my automation abilities at the same time. Its important to know that these utilize about 2 watts each, just to function. This might not seem like much, but with two+ dozen of them running 24 hours a day - were talking about a ~50 watt constant load just to monitor outlet energy. For me, Ive killed and automated much more than that, so Im in the black as it were. Its important, at least for me, to keep tabs on the cost and value of energy monitoring. Im hoping I can continue to use these to save at least $500 in energy in the next 5 years, and so far, that seems to be a reasonable goal based on how I use them. Lastly, I dont want to get too much into minutia, but you need a fairly robust WiFi network to support the internet of things over WiFi. Personally, I utilize multiple networks, including Lutron, Z-Wave, Zigbee and WiFi to get there. Put simply, I dont use these cheap and ubiquitous hacked WiFi devices to service mission critical applications in any way. If a failure would cost me a fair bit of money, I spend more than $10 to capture energy usage and (sometimes) provide switching capabilities. +4 stars for being a hackable and very useful device overall. You can debate about that last star, even I waver between 4 and 5 stars. They provide much value for not much dollar and a reasonable +/-2 year path to return on investment for many people that are trying to optimize energy consumption or provide local, automated switching controls.

The power adaptor is WiFi based, and I still havent connected to hassio yet. I tried to reset the device into local API mode, but still no luck yet. The android app is clunky and requires a cloud login. I run hassio cloudless. After much frustration with DIY mode, I tried flashing it with tasmota. Soldering the wires was a bit delicate - I suggest using headers instead. Then I learned that some FTDI and other serial tools have 5v power with 3.3v logic. After I finally got a fully 3.3v setup, the board appears dead. It just emits zeros. Even if it works, it then needs calibration. Sonoff ZigBee devices, in comparison are flawless and just work. I think Im done with Sonoff Wifi devices for now. I already have one power meter that I made from a raspi and an inductive current sensor. Power measurement isnt that hard. That cost a little more, but I wasnt fighting a black box, I was building with fully specd components. This might work flawlessly for some people. Maybe I just have a broken unit. Still, nowhere near as simple as their zigbee devices.

Bn Link used to sell these with a power meter but I contacted them and they don’t offer the meter option anymore because of a chip shortage. These are a couple bucks more but the power meter is the feature I really like.