Smart Pug (SmartLife) Installation

I am trying to install a smart plug (SmartLife) on my system. During the final stages of the install it requests a 'Serial Number' and 'Verification Code' and states these should be either on the device itself or on the back of the manual provided inside the box. Neither of these are provided. As I purchased this through Amazon I send a query to the seller via them. The response from the seller is that a device ID isn't provided and that the user should specify his own. I have attempted to do this but still can't complete the install as it states my identification doesn't match the device installed. Has anyone had this experience that can provide feedback?

Regards
Alan

alandean Are these GE Smart Plugs you're setting up, or another brand? If the latter, they won't be supported in the GE app which is why it won't work.

I agree with Cdent. the ones from Amazon do not work with Givenergy ecosystem. I am afraid you will have to bite the bullet and pay the full price for Givenergy smart plugs. They are about £13 each in eBay. Well worth it, they are very responsive and accurate. causes frequent rows in the household as to who is using what and when!!! A great feature is to be able to switch them off individually from my mobile phone Givenergy app!!!!

Cdent thanks for the response, i thought i was buying the GE smart plug but evidently not.

Steventon22 Are you able to say if the GE smart plugs allow automations like switching on when battery is charged and there is excess solar? Thanks.

Steventon22 thanks for the clarity, I’ll invest in the correct type.

lee On the face of it, not a bad idea. But imagine if it did this, then you may have e.g. a radio plugged in, which would keep switching on and off of its own accord!!! You could I suppose plug in a radiant electric heater (like the old grannie's bar heaters) if that were the case, which would respond to the surplus energy -no good in the middle of summer in a heat-wave!!
There is a device that does what you suggest, and that is the Solar iBoost, which feeds into an immersion heater as and when there is surplus energy. I have one fitted, and It for the most part gives me free heated water, if I am careful of what else I draw from my supply. The device relies on and only works with a resistive load (the immersion heater itself) and delivers proportional power according to what is available. It will not work for switching on and off the radio mentioned above!!
So, the short answer is no, it will not do what you think it might do. It does however enable you to schedule on-and-off periods according to your personal requirements. So you can program it to turn on the radio or whatever else, and off again at different times you specify.
Hope that helps clear up that one!

lee I believe that is in the works, but hasn't been released yet.

alandean there may be a way to do what you need with home assistant, but otherwise the GE ones will be best

Cdent Difficult to see how it will achieve that. The G.E. plug is as far as I am aware, capable of switching 240v at up to 13A. If there was for example only 200 watts available as "excess", then the plug would be limiting power to 200 watts. If you have something plugged in that requires more than that then the item will not work!!
Apologies if I am wrong, but I feel pretty sure that the only thing that could be made to work is a resistive load like an oil heater or similar......... Maybe GivEnergy have a trick or two up it's sleeve?

I wouldn't recommend getting the GE smartplug just yet. It has quite a major bug where it locks itself to the first wifi network that you connect it to. If you then switch broadband provider, it won't be able to connect to the new wifi network no matter how many times you reset the plug.

GE are aware of this issue and I'm currently in communications with the support/Dev team to try to resolve this... if they can. But for now, I would avoid the GE smartplug.

Hi, thanks for responses and sorry for taking the thread off-course.

In an ideal world I would like to set the plug to turn on if excess greater than a specific threshold (i.e. the load of the device). I would like to use this for a portable radiator in spring, when I do have excess and I still require heating. In summer I have a 1KW heat pump for an intex pool that at present I manually switch with a TP-Link smart plug.

I think at the moment my solution is likely home assistant but am struggling to get hold of a raspberry pi 4 to run this on.

I had hoped when GE released their plugs that this would be a feature without the need for further tinkering etc.

lee I'm looking at adding a heat pump to our pool, also INTEX. How does thee 1kw HP perform? What size is your pool?

cluelesscris The one I have is a Sunspring. On checking the actual power draw is 800W for 4.85KW of heat (at the right conditions). Definitely has extended the time we use the pool for and the comfort. I tend to mostly run when we do have excess solar & when the sell unit price on agile isn't too high and I notice a difference. Probably needs to run more than I let it to further improve the comfort (the agile sell rates were too tempting last year). I have the 10ft pool.

Steventon22 my idea would be based on knowing what each plug is connected to - naming them as such - and then some logic in the automation to say something like if export is over xxx watts for xx mins, then turn on plug A. This is my understanding of the logic GE were building into their automations, and is similar to how an iBoost or Eddi might work

Odinias easy way to fix this is use your old wireless SSID and password on your new router, then everything, including phones/tablets/etc will reconnect

lee you could look at Dell Wyse terminals, they can run home assistant and are low powered.

lee That's useful to know. We have a 12 x 9 pool and love it - 8 years old now and still going strong. I'll definitely be looking further into a ASHP for it. Thanks.

lee struggling to get hold of a raspberry pi 4 to run this on.

Don't! They're amazing devices but as rare as hen's teeth. Go onto eBay and buy a second hand/refurbished Dell Wyse thin client for about £40; half the price of a RPi if you could get one, and sooooo much faster.

I've got HA running on such a device (Dell Wyse 5070) with 8GB Ram and 64GB SSD, but anything like 4GB RAM and 8GB SSD will probably get you going. The HA installation for x86 is out of the box and just works.