Eve Announces New Matter Outlet, Light Switch and Blinds

Smart outlets are funny, because they're a product that the geek in me feels like I should want, but I have absolutely no actual use for. I plug in lots of stuff, but exactly 0% of it is something that there's even marginal value in remotely controlling. Electronics, computers, kitchen appliances, and so on, all of it is either always-on or there's no value at all in remotely controlling it. I guess I need more desk lamps or something?

The blinds I'd be excited about, especially since they're retrofit on existing blinds, except they appear to only be for roller blinds, and my house is very much a mini-blind house. Oh well.

I stopped buying this **** when companies left and right started not supporting older devices or changing terms of service after the fact.

Smart outlets are funny, because they're a product that the geek in me feels like I should want, but I have absolutely no actual use for. I plug in lots of stuff, but exactly 0% of it is something that there's even marginal value in remotely controlling. Electronics, computers, kitchen appliances, and so on, all of it is either always-on or there's no value at all in remotely controlling it. I guess I need more desk lamps or something?

The blinds I'd be excited about, especially since they're retrofit on existing blinds, except they appear to only be for roller blinds, and my house is very much a mini-blind house. Oh well.

We're in the process of going solar, where saving every last bit of electricity is a good thing. Knowing that I have a toaster over that trickles out power even when it's not on would be useful. Turn off all your unused outlets overnight when you'll never use them and they won't contribute to backup battery drain (unless the outlets themselves drain, which I'm guessing they do.) Would be interesting to see what the tradeoff is, and if the outlet itself would save wasted trickle on a given appliance.

No I have a motion sensor in the office that turns the plug on when I arrive in the morning, that then reconnects all the hue bulbs / lights that are running through it, my screens, docking base and chargers. Its all connected via Zigbee to home assistant. Once per quarter home assistant then reads the values and notifies with how much I have to charge back.

Ahh, I stand corrected in that case. Motion detector isn't quite as "smart home" as a geofence or something, but that's certainly not just power measurement.

The idea of "control cool things" like a coffee maker and stuff....in practicality just isn't something most people need or really even want 🤷🏻‍♂️

On top of not really wanting it, another substantial issue with the "control cool things"/"make anything smart by plugging it into a smart plug" concept is that a lot of devices just aren't controlled that way.

The coffee maker is a perfect example: My coffee maker is quite dumb, but still requires you to push a button to start it brewing, so putting it on a smart plug would let me automate essentially nothing. If I wanted even the most basic of automation, I'd need to buy a new one that has a built-in timer, if not something fancy and internet connected.

Likewise every other device other than a lamp that I might want to automate--if it doesn't automatically start doing whatever I want it to do as soon as it's plugged in, a smart plug does nothing for it. I think the only thing I own that might be usable that was is a hot water pot that heats up on being plugged in, but it already has a timer built-in so I would get little out of adding more significant automation to it.

What is with the pricing of these smart devices? $50 for a plug outlet or a light switch?

I completely agree that the controllers that plug into a regular outlet are FAR better than an integrated one not only because you can move it around, but also because a product failure is a much simple thing to replace.

True, but on the other hand something that doesn't stick out of the wall can be useful, and at minimum it certainly looks cleaner--I have a couple of USB-port-included outlets, which are pleasingly tidy. The amount of work to replace it if it breaks is probably relative to how used to replacing outlets you are; it's not as easy as just plugging in a new one, but it's also not all that much harder for something that should last a decade.

I use them quite a bit. I didn't for the longest while because I too was like "....but why?" However, now I use them extensively. Most of it is related to nighttime lighting. I use them because I have now installed multiple LED strip lights around my house. I also have installed some decorative lights in a couple rooms in my house. In most cases there was no "smart" version of these products or if there was they were 5-10x more expensive.

This is a good use-case, and I kind of alluded to it with my comment that "I guess I need more desk lamps or something?" It's not that there aren't any good uses of smart plugs, just that there are a lot less than it feels like there should be, since most plugged-in things have no value in having that plug be automated.

Lighting products seem like by far the biggest one--on/off and don't mind being randomly unplugged to turn off--especially things (like LED strips) that couldn't also be served by putting a smart bulb in the same lamp (although I could imagine that having your choice of dumb lightbulb with a smart plug might be cheaper and have more options than a smart bulb in a dumb plug).

In my house personally, though, I literally have one plugged-in bedside lamp, everything else is a fixture. Obviously that's not true for everyone.