Itead Studio Sonoff and Slampher: Low Cost Smart Home Solution - Review

RE: Itead Studio Sonoff and Slampher: Low Cost Smart Home Solution - Review

mcb1 — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 03:05:33 GMT

I got sent a video link for the iTead Factory and in particular Sonoff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZjZZKiKlNY

Audio gets a 5 out of 10 and that's only because they admit it's less than ideal.

The new packaging looks great and the new certification for the UK should mean they have a product that can be used.

[mention:b0bc65b9ecdc4307bd967592f00e340a:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] maybe you can order them now.?

https://www.itead.cc/smart-socket.html

Cheers

Mark

RE: Itead Studio Sonoff and Slampher: Low Cost Smart Home Solution - Review

Former Member — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 17:41:23 GMT

I am wondering how can I add this Sonoff switch to a garage door opener so that my GDO can have an added remote and can also be operated by an APP?

I have seen a Sonoff with 433Mhz and WiFi as well here.

RE: Itead Studio Sonoff and Slampher: Low Cost Smart Home Solution - Review

clem57 — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:13:03 GMT

Can links be fixed ? Ty

RE: Itead Studio Sonoff and Slampher: Low Cost Smart Home Solution - Review

Gough Lui — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 10:52:43 GMT

Hi there [mention:f41e2ee59abe4bccafbde24690c349e0:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05]

Just thought I'd pop in and thank you for the link, as well as offer my 2c on your measurement method. While I know the pain of not having the right gear, and definitely appreciate your efforts in doing the best with what you have, you might actually run into more trouble than just missing/over-estimating transient peaky consumption events alone. In fact, you might find that the meter does a good job of actually handling transient events on a "gross" scale (i.e. a radio goes on, MCU wakes from sleep), as most front ends are sample-and-hold converter type designs which kind of "integrate" the signal over a period and then convert it out, so the transient would not be as well defined (i.e. you don't see a large peak) but the average value will represent the transient's effect (integrated over the time).

The bigger issues are multiple fold - namely that your meters probably give you Vrms and Arms but not the phase relationship of the current versus the voltage (i.e. power factor). As a result, you would be measuring the apparent power (VA), and we all know that these kinds of equipment can have wildly varying power factors with 0.4 to 0.6 being common, and occasional surprises (i.e. 0.1 or 0.9 even). Even if you did manage to measure another device for comparison, without knowing the power factor, you would quite likely come to an incorrect conclusion about which was better if the power factor varied somewhat. Further to that, you would be estimating the power as VA but the actual watts consumed will likely be less (for PF <1).

The other thing is the micro-side of things, as many devices use switchmode converters with high crest factor waveforms for current (Acf), these may exceed your meter's ability for crest factor resulting in under-reported current at every AC cycle. This likely comes about due to bandwidth limitations on the multimeter's front end. Some of the switching converters have Acf >3 which makes it very difficult for meters to properly register, and generally higher crest factor means higher reading error as well, which would not bode well for small standby-magnitude currents. It might be nice to deal with a scope to get more accurate current waveforms, but most scopes don't handle AC line voltage very well or safely ... and even a proper power meter such as the Tektronix PA1000 generally won't handle Acf > 10 in a well defined way, and generally with increasing error for greater Acf values.

I'm not an expert in the area, admittedly, but these were the things that popped out at me the most. There are plug-in power meters, but as I recently investigated the one I had, it seems they're possibly just as misleading if not more.

Keep up the good work.

- Gough

EDIT: Another thing I noticed with Agilent/Keysight meters using the Handheld Meter Logger is that yes, you will get issues with missing signals because the meter operates at something like 3-7Hz, and the serial poll only requests a sample once every second, meaning that your "log" is kind of "blind" for 2/3rds or so of the time. It is a niggle that I have noticed, so you might be right there.

RE: Itead Studio Sonoff and Slampher: Low Cost Smart Home Solution - Review

DAB — Fri, 25 Dec 2015 19:37:56 GMT

Good review.

It is always interesting to see new technology evolve.

DAB

RE: Itead Studio Sonoff and Slampher: Low Cost Smart Home Solution - Review

Robert Peter Oakes — Fri, 25 Dec 2015 08:21:51 GMT

I too am in the process of reviewing these producs along with their Nextion Displays and a RBoard, they all look very well built and as [mention:8fb233e8974445138ef0af2b63b49f94:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] says, with 433Mhz support, it should be possible to control locally. I am in the process of trying to get them to work locally over the WIFI also

BTW, the MiniRBoard also supports the NRF24L01 and basic serial and is based on the ATMEGA328 so should be a breeze to get working with many different controllers

Even though there not yet CE or UL CSA certified yet, there well built and look like they should be able to pass the test when the time comes

RE: Itead Studio Sonoff and Slampher: Low Cost Smart Home Solution - Review

mcb1 — Fri, 25 Dec 2015 07:44:44 GMT

Nice work.

We questioned this when it started showing up as 'advertising' while no-one could find it on their site.

I've dealt with iTEAD before and they do have a great range of very affordable products, but the need to use their server for the app does concern me.

At least the 433 MHz remote doesn't need this and will give an On/Off control.

I'm also going to support it as I can see some uses, even if I default to 433MHz.

Mark