Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is an interesting device with potential, but out-of-the-box it has some serious limitations you should know about.
The device has two data interfaces, mini-USB and Ethernet. All configuration of the device must be done via USB from a Windows computer (there is also a freeware Linux utility, and the protocol is documented as well). The Ethernet port appears to not accept incoming connections of any kind, it only makes outgoing connections at intervals to report its status.
The reason I bought the device was its ability to turn the output socket off and on by remote control over the network. I have a flaky system that periodically needs to be hard power-cycled, and this looked like a reasonably inexpensive way to get that capability.
The way the "net" feature of the device works is as follows: You configure a hostname and path to a POST script and an update interval. Each interval, it will connect to the web site configured and submit a POST request with its current status. The web server can then, if it chooses to, respond with "[1]" to turn the power off or "[0]" to turn it back on. So if you're willing to write your own custom server application to log and control the device you should (theoretically) be able to do whatever you want.
By default the device posts its data to the manufacturer's web site and you can create a free account there to view the logged data and (in theory anyway) also control the power output on the device.
There are a few problems with this. The "free" web account only accepts updates from the device every 15 minutes, and it will reconfigure the device back to 15m if you try to set it up faster.
Because the power control is done as a response to a data post, a power cycle operation will take between 15 and 30 minutes to complete. You have to ask it to turn the power off, then wait for the next poll interval, then ask for the power to be turned back on, then wait 15 minutes for that to happen.
If you wanted to have a 1 minute polling interval (reducing the time to power cycle from 30m to 2m or less) then you would have to pay $25 per month(!) for this.
Also, so far the web-based power-control feature DOES NOT EVEN WORK! You ask it to turn the power off, wait as long as 15 minutes, and then it simply reports that the power is still on. The posted energy usage data comes through fine, but either the server is not sending the power off response or the device is not getting it, or is ignoring it.
So, assuming (I haven't tried it yet) that writing your own server code will actually work, then this a pretty useful device I think. But if you're expecting to use it to monitor and control your device via the web, these features are fairly limited and the power control just does not work (at least so far for me).
Otherwise the features are similar to any of the other (lesser) Watts Up models.
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