WiOn 50049 Outdoor Wi-Fi Wireless Plug-In Switch; Smartphone And Tablet Automation For Up To 12 Devices 2 Grounded Outlets Weather Resistant Energy Saving Wifi Controlled Switch

These work great; have purchased 3 of them, the first one about 2 years ago, and its still going strong. To be fair, though, I do live in Southern California, so the unit hasnt lived through much rain and moisture, but has stood up well to extreme heat. I have one unit set up with weekend sunrise/sunset timers for our patio string lights; I used another with time on/time off settings for our holiday lights. Gifted the third unit to our neighbors who, every night and morning, were pushing and pulling their holiday lights cord into and out of an outlet; just couldnt bear to see them do it anymore. Only negative is the apps interface, which could use some serious updating and streamlining; its straight outta 2010. However, with the various timer options, its pretty much set-it-and-forget-it, so the app shouldnt be needed after the initial set up. And initial set-up itself was fairly painless; just followed the simple instructions.

Lets just say I have wasted an hour trying to get it to work. Customer service helpfully sent me this email information which should have been included in the original instructions. Since I dont know how to disable my 5 GHZ band on my router (installed by my cable company) and am tired of working on this, I will return it. USES BAND WIDTH: 2.4GHz Band width if 5.0 or higher will not connect. Check your router settings, try resetting your router. If your router has dual band width then you will need to disable the higher. Here are some troubleshooting suggestions for you to consider. For initial set-up be within. 3 ft. of your router. Also, you need to look in your phone settings in data usage – allow permission for WiOn app to use data. With the WiOn device hard-wired or plugged in, the process to add a WiOn device is: 1. Go into your phones SETTINGS 2. Then WI-FI settings 3. Look for a new network named ECO### and connect to it NOTE: IF IT SAYS CANNOT FIND INTERNET – JUST MOVE ON 4. NEXT STEP: (this is when you open WiOn app) (Note: if it does not find the router then hit the + button on your WiOn app to add your router) Follow the on-screen directions to add your country, zip code/area code, name of router(this is name of your network) and Wi-Fi password, your phone will then attach that WiOn device to your local network, the new device will now be listed on the main screen of the app and ready to use. If it does not connect: Delete the WiOn app and reinstall it. NOTE: IPhone users must go to app store to install new app not the app that is stored on the Cloud. Then once it is reinstalled go into your iphone settings (not the WiOn app settings), go to WiFi and see if a new network called “ECO” followed by some numbers appears. If it does, connect to that network and follow the onscreen instructions, which should ultimately lead you into the WiOn app and your device will appear.

I got this item to control the outdoor ground/pathway lights in my backyard. I have and old power supply for the lights but all it can do is turn the lights on or off. I need adjustment for daylight savings time. So instead of buying a new power supply. I got one of these. It works great! I now plug the power supply into this and then into the outlet. The app is good and easy to set up. With the app there are many different options for turning lights on and off. I cant try the Alexa part of things because I dont have one. Sorry. Great product would buy again if need to.

I purchased three of these as single devices since they were out of the bundle pack and received them yesterday. They were easy to connect to Alexa and have a pretty good wifi range. I am using them for Christmas lights and it makes it very convenient to turn them on and off with Alexa instead of the old wireless remote devices I had. The batteries for the old ones were $5-6 each. The only two things I would ask for is to add the usage functionality to them as the competitors have and to add it to the IFTTT app. With IFTTT, you can trigger the devices to turn on and off at sunset and sunrise, just like the competitors do. I bought these for price and function since the competitors dont seem to have an outdoor unit available. It seems like a great product.

Worked great for a while, then we had to unplug and re-plug several times a week to get it to connect with Alexa. This week NONE of the 3 we have worked with Alexa and would not connect no matter what we tried. Checked the WiOn app and saw several people had the same problem starting THIS week. No longer compatible with Alexa. I ordered 3 OTHER brand plugs that I have had success with. LOOK ELSEWHERE!! If you are OK with just using the WiOn app it works fine. We bought specifically on the promise to work with Alexa. *UPDATE: Returned these plugs and purchased the Kasa plugs. SO easy to I install and work like a charm with Alexa! Also, BOTH plugs on each unit can be controlled separately. ( Not so with the WiOn plugs.)

The product works out of the box but only after I read the reviews here and a few resets did I get it working. Tips to get it to work with Alexa aside from naming it one word and reinstalling the app: Make sure the device is on the same network as Alexa, we have a guest network and I was really frustrated until I realized it was on the guest network not the main network Alexa was using. For some reason, I had to refresh the network list a few times before it showed up even though it was right next to the router.

At its core it works, but there are a lot of hang ups with this unit which is why I am searching for a replacement. Getting the wi-fi connected is a bit of a process. You will need a little technical ability to get it set up. Once it is set up control from the app is pretty simple. The wi-fi on this unit is very flaky. We have a number of power outages in my neighborhood and its a crap shoot if this will connect once power is back up. Sometimes it connects with no problem on its own, sometimes I have to pair it with the wi-fi again while its still in its normal location, sometimes I have to unplug it and take it upstairs near my router for it to pick up the wi-fi again. Have been dealing with this for a while with this unit but now I am over it and looking for a replacement.

The product works great. It connects every time. I set it up for my outdoor lights, and I can now set them on a schedule and turn them on and off via my smartphone or Amazon Alexa. As of 06/09/2017, they finally added Amazon Alexa compatibility. If the company makes a new version, I wish that they could control the input plugs separately from your smart phone or with Alexa. The way the product works now is, if you plug in different items in the two in-going plugs, they work in sync with each other and cannot be controlled separately.

For a few years, I had 5 of these controlling my outdoor landscaping lights. I liked that they didnt require a hub, didnt require communication over the Internet with a server somewhere, and was completely self-contained on my home network. I finally abandoned these in favor of a hub-based system (like SmartThings and Wink) because they are just way too unreliable and have very few programming options. The app that controls these is atrocious and looks like it was designed by someone with no app design experience. Although it can do things like turn on the lights at sunset and turn them off at sunrise, theres no way to do something like turn off the lights 4 hours after sunset unless you program it manually. That may have changed in the few months since I got rid of them. It should be something easy to implement if someone was actually working to improve the app. These have to be in range of a really good wifi signal, otherwise they are impossible to program and control manually. One nice thing is that it will remember the programming, even if not connected to wifi. There were lots of times where the app said the switches couldnt be reached by wifi, but they still turned on and off at the right times. When that happened, the only way to reset the wifi connection was to physically go to the switch and reset it, which was a huge pain. I was constantly having to mess around with the app and the switches to get them to work. Since switching over to a server-based hub system with a better app interface, Ive not had to touch or reprogram my landscape lights once.

I use these with outdoor heated snow mats, which add up to nearly 15 amps so it handles a heavy load well. The iPhone app has many features and works well once set up, but getting it set up may require reviewing comments from other users 1st. There is an extra step to enable remote access (called Cloud access so they function when youre not on the same WiFi network, i.e. Cellular), and if you have multiple phones you want to control them with, you need to go through the setup process on each device. Once set up it does work well with Alexa/Echo, but again youll need to review the comments from prior users (Hint: Name the controller with a single word name otherwise Alexa/Echo wont see it) and if you have multiple switches the Alexa/Echo group feature allows you to easily turn them all on/off with a single command. Ive used the 1st for an entire season and purchased more for this year as I added more heated mats around the house.