Wemo and Meross smart light switches
May 16, 2021
Overview
I wanted to start dabbling in the home automation world, so I decided to start with something easy. Requiring an intermediary hub was out of the question, so connecting directly to Wi-Fi was required. I’m already neck deep in the Apple ecosystem which made HomeKit support a must. I started out using Meross products, but I ran into some disconnection issues when I upgraded my network hardware. More on that towards the end of the article. I then switched over to Wemo devices, and I’ve been using them happily ever since. I think my network issue still persists, but the Wemo switches seem to handle the issue more gracefully.
Meross
Meross seems to be a fairly new company, and I heard about them through and Indiegogo campaign. They have a long list of IoT devices and are adding new items all the time. I only tested out their HomeKit compatible light switch, but it worked well. Also, their pricing is very competitive. The response time is noticeably slower than the Wemo switches, and the Meross switches seem to take a few seconds longer to update their status in the Apple Home app. A few seconds doesn’t sound like a lot, but it can get annoying if you just want to quickly see the status of your devices as soon as you open the Home app. I would like to praise the Meross support team for a moment. I reached out to them when I ran in to my networking issues. I describe my home network setup and what gear I was using. Within 24 hours, I had a personalized response stating they were aware there was an issue with my particular network gear. They stated that they were investigating the issues but didn’t have any additional information at this time. Now for the impressive part. Without prompting from me, they offered to refund all four light switches that I had purchased. All I had to do was provide my Amazon order ID(s) for the light switches. I provided this information and had a refund on my credit card within three days. This type of customer support shocked me, and I will definitely look at their products in the future if the issue is resolved with my network gear.
Wemo
When forced to change, I went with the Wemo light switches mainly because they were similar in price and had numerous positive reviews on Amazon. They connected to the network easily, and I actually prefer the look of the Wemo switches over the Meross devices. The app is more polished as well. There isn’t much to say about a functioning light switch, but the response time does stand out. As I mentioned earlier, these switches are fast. Not only in changing state when commanded from the Home app but also in regards to updating their status in the Home app. When opening the Home app, I would frequently see the “updating” text for the Meross devices where the Wemo device updated almost instantly. Wemo also seems to be adding new devices, but they don’t come close to having the number of IoT devices that Meross has, and Meross seems to be turning out new devices more rapidly.
Network troubles
Now for the odd/interesting part. I had a nice Ubiquiti Unifi network setup at my previous house. When we moved to our new house, I temporarily setup a TP Link router until I could decide on a home for my network gear and get all the ethernet cabling routed through the house. The Meross switches were initially setup with the TP Link router running my network, and I had no issues. As soon as I setup my Ubiquiti gear, my Meross switches would randomly disconnect and refuse to reconnect. My Ubiquiti gear consists of a USG security gateway, US-8-60W managed switch with PoE, UC-CK CloudKey, and two U6-LR Wi-Fi 6 access points (I upgraded for the new house). I read article after article online and tried toggling what felt like every advanced setting Ubiquiti offered. After a few weeks, I gave up and contacted Meross customer support. I’ve already stated how pleasant that experience was. I thought the Wemo switches were working perfectly until I happened to catch one of them blinking red, which means no Wi-Fi connection. I checked it again 1-2 minutes later, and everything was normal. I have since caught some of the other Wemo switches doing this as well. This hasn’t caused any issues for me yet, and my guess is it’s because the Wemo switches actually reconnect to the network fairly quickly. The Meross switches would get disconnected and just never reconnect until you set them up all over again. This leads me to believe that some setting in my Ubiquiti system is occasionally kicking these things off the network. I have not noticed this with any other Wi-Fi connected devices in my house (computers, tablets, phones, gaming consoles, TVs, etc.)
More to come
I am still looking into this issue, but I’ve not yet devoted a lot of time to it. With the Wemo switches, the issue doesn’t really affect me, so the motivation to spend my time troubleshooting is low. I will be sure to update this though if I find a solution. If someone familiar with Ubiquiti networking systems happens to read this and has an idea, please reach out to me on Mastodon. I’m open to any and all suggestions.