Although announced last spring and having missed Belkin’s promised fall release, we knew the HomeKit-endowed WeMo Bridge was poised for release… and here it is. The Bridge does exactly what it says in linking up (a subset of) WeMo hardware to Apple’s smart home control — not only do you get direct Siri control of WeMo accessories, they’ll easily interoperate with all other devices in the ecosystem. For example, a WeMo motion sensor could be configured to trigger competing Hue lighting. Or the Philips Hue Motion Sensor, which I highly recommend, could trigger a WeMo Smart Outlet.
While WeMo Bridge pricing is reasonable at $40, it’s an easy decision for me to abstain. No, it’s not my well-documented frustrations with WeMo (since lessened) and HomeKit tepidness. It’s that Belkin has clearly abandoned the portion of the WeMo product line that I continue to rely on.
Wemo is very inconsistent and that’s why I will never go back to using the hardware.
I’m finally at a place of stability… assuming I make no changes and don’t introduce IFTTT recipes or anything. I do appreciate their on/off timers and parameters (like 15 minutes after Sunrise), but I may replace my remaining bulbs next time there’s a Hue A19 sale.
“I’m finally at a place of stability… assuming I make no changes and don’t introduce IFTTT recipes or anything.”
This is good, Dave. As we all know, in the IoT space, things are, at their very core, stable. Now that you’ve achieved this stability, the good news is that you’ll be able to maintain your current setup without any real effort on your part for years and years and years! Huzzah!
One could even say that you’ve achieved a very stable genius setup.
Just got an email from Belkin offering 40% of existing customers till 1/21 and a unique code
I guess they hate me… :) 40% is a great deal, similar to what Philips did with the Hue Bridge v2 update.