Minoston Zwave Outlet Plug, 800 Series Outdoor Z-Wave LR Smart Plug, On/Off Switch, Z Wave Hub Required, IP65 Weather-Resistant Waterproof, Built-in Repeater, Compatible with SmartThings Black (MP22Z)

This outdoor dual-plug controller has been an excellent purchase. At first, it was used outdoors for various lights and holiday items. It survived rain, heat, everything but snow (we don't really get snow here). When it's not in use outdoors, its use was for two studio monitors to be controlled by HomeAssistant. HomeAssistant paired with ZWaveJS and a Zooz 700-series controller has been rock solid. There are very few times where the controller won't recognize a back-to-back request to turn both outlets on/off. It does, however, recover and hasn't caused many issues in the two years I've had it. There are very few companies I trust with my ZWave network. At first, I was a little skeptical about Minoston because it was slightly cheaper compared to other brands. I was proven otherwise. I also have an energy monitoring smart plug, a standard smart plug, and another outdoor plug. Consider purchasing this outdoor smart plug. Note: I cannot speak for the dimmable ones as I did not purchase a dimmer plug.

Easily added this to my Hubitat automation system. Seems to work perfectly fine. Used outdoors to control lights. All good

I had a couple of minoston door sensors early on that weren't very good, but they took care of my issues. However I have since gotten a few of their plug in dimmers and most work fine. This outdoor dimmer was doing great for for almost a year then suddenly stopped. I reached out to see if they would help and they did, within DAYS I had a new device. But it only worked for a week? What the heck! So I took apart the original and the replacement to find out insects, notably earwigs, had gotten inside and shorted out between the line voltage side and the electronics. Presumably they entered through the ground plug hole as I was using a two prong device. Since I already had an email from them going for the replacement, I sent them pics in hopes they'd improve their device, but with no expectations since it clearly wasn't their fault. The NEXT DAY they advised me that not only had they already advised engineering of the issue, and apologized for the inconvenience, but had already sent ANOTHER replacement. Absolutely amazing. For now I added a piece of gaff tape to keep the bugs out.

Buyer Beware. Doesnt work with advertised dongles, and zero manufacturer response via any channel, online, whatsapp, etc. I would avoid this brand like the plague and will NEVER recommend it to anyone.

I've been trying to get some serious electrical monitoring going, sometimes also automations based switching, and these units have turned out to be my go-to for my outdoor applications. For the most part, I have one of these on every outdoor outlet in my home so I can capture electrical usage. I use Home Assistant for my home automation platform and generally prefer the Z-Wave protocol. When I first started buying these, the units were not fully enumerated in HA's Z-Wave-JS platform, but those issues have since been resolved. They are fully compatible with the energy monitoring features of HA and also work well for switching applications. The units have been generally reliable, quick to respond and meet most of my expectations. I have run into issues with devices that have a high startup/inrush current, these things are not compatible with this particular switch. When using them in these cases (e.g. air compressor, shop-vac, etc.), these units will "pop" and automatically turn off. This is probably good in some cases, but I am certain these situations are nowhere near the danger zone of popping breakers. I've had to find other energy monitoring switches for these applications. Despite the limitation above, I have tested these units up to about 1200 watts with no troubles. They appear to handle serious electrical loads, even though they they don't deal with high inrush current well. One other con? As mentioned, I have several of these (about 8) and all of them do intermittently go offline for unknown reasons. I get "unavailable" events in HA several times a day. My Z-Wave network is very robust, so I know it's not that, nor do I see this on any of my other 40 some-odd Z-Wave devices. Despite these events, this problem has never affected the operations of these devices. They continue to supply power and it hasn't (yet) interfered with any of my automations. I'm guessing this might be a firmware fault, or some other issue, but it hasn't caused me any troubles. A few examples of how I use them? I switch on/off Christmas lights for the holidays, based on sunset and sunrise times, as well as time of day. I've also started using these to control my block heaters for my vehicles. I can now apply a ton of intelligence to this by taking into account outdoor temperatures, specific times, work schedules and so forth. (Or, just start my block heater manually without going outside!) I also monitor heat tape on my home, allowing alerts if no electricity is used when temperatures are below certain values and the heat tape "should" be running. I also really like that these units monitor & report on over-voltage, over-current and general over-load situations. These events are enumerated in HA. I actually used these capabilities to troubleshoot a faulty extension cord recently, a situation that had escaped other diagnostics. You can almost think of it like a "smart circuit breaker" of sorts, a step well beyond standard breakers and even GFCI circuits. Overall, these are solid 4-star outdoor rated switches with built-in energy monitoring. Despite a few problems I have observed, they perform well for me and provide me with robust automation and energy capture capabilities. If you're looking for robust outdoor monitoring & switching capabilities based around Z-Wave, these aren't a bad way to go!

I like the "easy" way of running these types of things, and that involves as much complicated automation equipment as possible every time. My wife rolls her eyes when I explain how cool this will be whenever I get some gadget like this to make something go on/off without our manual efforts. She just pats me on the shoulder and says "that's nice, dear". LOL. This unit works great with my Z-Wave automation hub, which also connects to Apple's "Home" app on our mobile devices. Connecting the new unit to the existing Z-Wave network was simple, they provided the printed directions in the box. I then set my automation hub to make the Minoston unit to follow an automated schedule of "ON" at sunset, "OFF" at sunrise and all my Christmas lighting follow suit. Easy Peasy, right! Works perfect so far, I would recommend this unit for anyone looking for a low cost unit for outdoor installs. I have another wi-fi based outdoor switch that hasn't been so reliable, I'll probably replace it with one of these if the Minoston proves to be a more solid performer.

I'm using this with an Aeotec hub and Home Assistant and it works well. I did have to bring it inside to pair it, but then once moved outside it works fine. I like that the plug end is flat so it hangs on the outlet rather than the wire coming out of the plug making a sharp bend.

I'm using this to control my string lights around my front porch. Because it has two outlets, I'm going to also use it to control my Christmas lights when I put those up in a few weeks. I manage all of my Z-Wave devices with Hubitat and, although many Minoston outlets are supported automatically Hubitat, this 2-outlet device is not among them. Thankfully, Minoston offers the driver to make this work on their website free of charge. You just have to copy-paste the code from their website into a custom driver in Hubitat. This was my first time adding a custom driver in Hubitat and it was pretty straight forward. Minoston made it pretty easy. However, if the idea of this seems intimidating to you, you may want to try something else. Minoston provides the driver, so I can't fault them for it not being available natively on Hubitat. This seems more like a Hubitat problem, so I'm not going to knock this Minoston device down a star for that.