Controlling smartplugs using phone away from home

Some smart plugs go via the cloud, some use the cloud for setup and then the comms is local if that's available. Others have Bluetooth or Zigbee to a local hub or a Bluetooth app on your phone.

I don't know the TP-Link platform as to what they use.

Theo

I don't know. A quick scan of TP-Link's information doesn't give any clues. However, I think it's fair to say that most devices require the control commands to follow that path, so it's probably true of TP-Link Tapo too.

Any confirmation or correction would be welcome.

The path is long, but not necessarily fragile.

I bought Sonoff devices, and immediately flashed them with Tasmo so I could control them directly. I have a home-written "home automation gateway" that receives commands, parses them, and passes translated commands on to the devices. It also enables me to voice control them using IFTTT.

David

I have no hub for the smartplugs nor any extra hardware. There's only the smartplug along with standard home wi-fi and a standard smartphone.

So every time I use the smartplug, a Chinaman gets to know about it. And if the TP-Link servers in faraway Shenzhen crash, then devices in my house in good old Blighty stop working.

Even allowing for distributed servers and backups in the cloud giving good uptime, the switching on-and-off of my smartplugs is entirely reliant on the TP-Link company.

How did I ever get into such a crazy arrangement?

Earlier this month I sent back some Philips Hue smartbulbs because servers operated by Signify in the Netherlands were down when I tried to configure the bulbs. Maybe I should have done the same with the smartplugs.

if you haven't had to open up pinholes in your firewall, then most likely yes, that's the way they tend to operate nowadays

why fragile?

Nope, it'll go from your phone in the house, halfway round the planet to their servers, then back to the next-door room ...

Some of the Tuya ones are cunninger than that. The app and the plug chat to the cloud, and establish they're on the same wireless connection. Then the app can talk to the plug directly. That reduces the latency and means they still work if you pull the plug on your internet connection.

However what I don't know is how long they hold this up for. Eg if I turn the plug and the phone on from cold without internet, how does the phone find out the local IP of the plug if it's changed? DNS? Bluetooth?

So they may be doing local comms to improve latency, but not very robust in the face of a long term lack of internet.

Theo

No, but the Hue Bridge that links your lamps to an app run remotely will need an active internet connection.

Why you think you can control these lamps when away from home without an internet connection beats me!

Pamela formulated the question :

My Smart Plugs use Alexa and I can control them from anywhere which has internet, or mobile internet. I understand it operates via an Amazon Alexa website, always. Commands go from my phone, via mobile, or my LAN and broadband, to Amazon, then all the way back to my LAN and my Smart Plugs.

Because it/she/he/they is trolling.

So amazon knows when you are coming home so as to send you yet more adverts...

They don't actually think.

Its a random linkage of concepts, that's all

Something worth bearing in mind about these Internet of Things devices is security. Their protocol stacks are usually poorly written and never get updates. At the very worst they can provide a back door into your network. Best to operate them on a separate WiFi LAN from your important computers.

Ours are earlier generation Wemo smart lights and the main source of unreliability is not the internet cloud side of things but the hub to local device link. The only weakness I see with them is that you can't set a smart on at dusk off at fixed time mode.

Strangely a whole bunch of long standing weird glitches were eliminated when we moved base IP address as a result of taking FTTP.

One lamp would never accept switch on commands but would happily switch off that sort of thing. After a very hard reset it all works now.

One gotcha with all these IoT toys is that you must keep their firmware up to date. They seem to be riddled with security weaknesses and need monthly updates to avoid being compromised by bad actors.

They can't do much more than flash your lights on and off at present.

I do the same when traveling internationally. I use the Alexa app on my phone to turn a desktop computer on at home when I need it and connect to it via remote desktop.

Chris

I simply have my desktop machine at home on all the time, its power consumption is less than 20 watts so that's not an issue really. It serves as my mail and usenet news server and I log into it using ssh to read E-Mails and Usenet news. I have ssh automated so that it 'knows' whether I'm at home (i.e. it's just a connection across the LAN) or if I'm away (in which case it's a connection via an intermediate server). The intermediate server means I don't have to open up the firewall at home to ssh connections from anywhere, just from a couple of trusted servers (who do have to deal with ssh attacks from anywhere).

Well before the internet, people did just that with an auto-answer modem connected to your landline that you dialled into. Not sure if the hardware to do this is still available even if anyone wanted to use such an archaic method for remote control.

If the app doesn't switch (or dim) a Philips Hue bulb, they can be made to go on and off as normal from the wall switch.

Initially Hue bulbs needed a bridge but later ones don't and even later ones support Bluetooth used for the configuration. Hue bulbs with certain lumen rating have different features to bulbs in the same range with a different lumen rating. Product selection far from straightforward.

The Philips apps used to control these types of Hue (which can then interface with Alexa Echo) are not the same as one another. After installing the right app, it needs registering with Philips and even then, as I found, it doesn't always go smoothly.

Amazon, who sold me the bulb, and Philips have reasonably good helplines to help customers but even second level support couldn't understand why I was able to control a Hue (including dimming) but only provided a specific Amazon Echo was plugged in -- because the standard user config doesn't work like that. I spent TWO HOURS on one phone call trying to sort this out (I didn't think Tech Support were permitted to stay on one call for so long) and still didn't manage to work it out leaving the techie to go back and check if Amazon had been supplied with all the tech documentation by Philips.

In the end I sent my Hue bulbs back (even though they were a bargain £5 each), except for one which I keep for use as an ordinary LED bulb. Every now and then I feel inspired enough to configure it but it still goes wrong, so I leave it alone and opt for a quiet life.

My smartplugs are also controllable from Alexa. I can operate them away from my wi-fi using either the TP-Link Tapo app or Alexa.

By fragile I mean there are more opportunities for undue propagation delays (and maybe "man-in-the-middle" hacking) by going across the world and back.

One thing that is worth remembering is that an off machine cannot be hacked.

If you leave your machines on 24/7 (which I do) you need to accept the increased surface area for attack.

Way back in the late 80s I rigged an auto answer modem to power up a PC when called. For a brief sneeze of time I wondered about patenting a modem with such a feature built in.