Slightly off topic: while I understand their analogy, as a German beer lover (especially Bavarian beer), their analogy saying that the foam is "waste" made me cringe as that picture is a perfectly poured helles lager with a nice head to get the aroma (and beer mustache).
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Curious if anyone has been able to verify the ETL listing status for these plugs. If valid, there should be a listing number that can be checked against the ETL Intertek registry.
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Reviving this thread - how chatty are these plugs? Looking for something to replace 3 Sonof S40 plugs that I think are causing some flakiness on my mesh.
I have 4 of the basic ThirdReality plugs that work great, but they are out of stock on Amazon and discontinued on their website.
I’m considering getting these but don’t need the power reporting aspect and will look elsewhere if they cause a bunch of unnecessary chatter on my mesh that otherwise can’t be avoided with a driver setting.
Thanks!
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If open to alternatives, the Innr 224 (non power reporting, zigbee 3.0) plugs are great - excellent repeaters and very reliable.
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I don't believe there is any way to control the power updates or turn them off, it seems to ignore that configuration setting from my attempts and while the updates seem reasonable I would say this is not a device to purchase if you want to completely minimize traffic and don't need power reporting.
Third Reality really did a great job on this plug and Zigbee 3.0 compliance but fumbled the ball at the endzone with this one implementation failure (not even sure how they got Zigbee 3 certification with this glaring omission to the standard).
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In some instances, smart plugs with power monitoring can be quite useful.If you make the mistake of using these plugs when power monitoring is not needed, you can run the risk of overwhelming the hub with data. It becomes a denial of service attack. I have four of the power monitoring plugs, but I use standard plugs without power monitoring for other applications, especially when the primary purpose of the plug is to act as a repeater and the switching function is rarely used..
I used to purchase the eWeLink technology plugs such as CMARS, but after a couple of those 10 amp plugs were damaged during a power outage in an ice storm, I started replacing them with the Third Reality 15 amp plugs. I have not had them but a few months, but they seem to work well so far..
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Very similar to my environ. I'm running 3 of the 3rd reality units, and 12 CMARS/Seedans - before the recent ... outbreak... I was rock solid for months.
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Conclusion and then comments:
If using solely as a repeater, it's not very chatty,
if using for a load that is frequently off, not very chatty,
if using for a load that is frequently on, pretty chatty.
Here is one with no load on it, so not very chatty at all (basically hasn't reported anything since I paired it 5 hours ago):
Here is one with a very small load on it (pretty chatty):
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Thank you! This is precisely the info I was hoping for. Thanks to everyone that replied as well!
In addition to the above, here is something maybe worth noting. These, TR Plug and TR Plug 2, were paired a couple days ago and nothing is plugged into them, nor have they been turned on / off except for initial installation but they are the highest on the list of counts...Even more then my presence sensors. which check in a lot. I don't think it's an issue but maybe worth noting.
I am using the Generic Zigbee Outlet driver.
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Wow, this is very interesting. Mine looks even worse and it's weird because there's very little/no correlation between the processing time and the number of events.
@Bullfrog Right! I am wondering whats going on behind the scenes with this plug, and if anything can be done about it, or if it even needs to be.
Dang it, tried a community driver and now they are reporting in every 30 seconds. Which I actually think they are doing this anyway. and is making the counts so high. Just with the generic driver it is not being reported in the logs maybe. So I switched to "device" cleared everything and then back to Generic Zigbee Outlet driver, but the power reporting of 0 Watts won't stop.
FYI, there is a firmware update available for this plug. I noticed that my plug that has significantly less processing time is using different firmware from the other 4, but I don't know if that's good or bad (none of them are using the latest). I'll let you know if it cuts out some of the processing time in a few hours.
You can use the "Update Firmware" command/button in the community driver to do it.
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I really wish Hubitat would work on that firmware upgrade. I never know if the button does anything.
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Not much feedback on the button indeed, but the info about the update process shows up in the logs.
Mine was flooding the network with the generic driver, but behaving well with the community Tuya driver. I just updated from 1001302A to 1001302C, but I'm not home to play with it.... I'll let you know how that goes.
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A little over 3 hours in and it doesn't appear as if the new firmware has changed much - if anything, there has actually been a slight increase in the "% of Total" for each of the 5 plugs. Obviously, this is not a perfectly controlled experiment, but there certainly was not a dramatic improvement. Hopefully @ThirdReality can tweak the firmware to calm this down a bit.
