BG Smart socket

Interesting. I do worry a little about the parasitic load of all these USB/smart/whateveriscomingnext sockets though.

Link for those interested...

I give it 4 years until the app stops working...

Theo

How much are you going to pay me when mine still works fine. Given its zigbee, it already works with all of Homekit, siri, google and alexa, and wont be stopping any time soon.

The X10 system still works after more than a decade but I havent used it for years now.

I can't find anywhere that says its ZigBee, any links? Alexa and Google support seem to rely on the BG app being set up so I would expect them to need the app.

Dave

Can you connect to the switch remotely? or does the phone have to be connected to the local wifi?

No they do not. All you need to do is set up the devices in Homekit or the other zigbee supporting systems. No need for the app.

And there isnt just one app for the Hue system, there are dozens of them from 3rd parties.

At a rough guess your phone connects half way round the world to a server that the smart socket has already connected to, and the phone asks the server to tell the socket to turn on/off ...

Could be, I have a thermostat which works like that. You just have to hope that the server is kept running.

ore than a decade but

We are talking about a BG socket, where does Phillips Hue come from...

Is there any doc on that?

Where does it say its part of "hue"?

Dave

From the usual thread divergence when someone said they would never use anything like that because you'd be lucky if the remote server or app stayed viable for long. The big advantage with a standard like zigbee is that it will continue fine even if the manufacturer goes bust etc.

Yep google Homekit, google and alexa.

It doesn?t because it isnt.

except the BG socket has WiFi, not ZigBee

Duh. If the quoting hadn't been stripped back so aggressively, it would be obvious that comment wasn't about the BG socket, it was about whether all of those sockets would be at risk if the manufacturer went bust or gave up on the socket.