Smart switches are one of the easiest ways to bring your home into the era of the connected home, allowing you to switch appliances on and off remotely, from your phone, or through your Google Assistant or Alexa. They’re available from a number of known brands (and many lesser known brands), but some of the best ones are ones you mightn’t have heard of.
Not long ago we all went a bit nuts and bought some Aldi Smart Switches for $19 each, and though they had some initial issues (like randomly turning off), a firmware update quickly came and fixed that, making them great value. Well, those switches have come and gone, but Mirabella (an Australian company based in Melbourne) has its range of Genio smart products on shelves at K-Mart.
Starting at just $29, you can can grab smart switches which will quickly bring your dumb appliances into the connected world. The Genio smart switch is an easy buy, and better yet, it’s compatible with Google Assistant, Alexa and mobile apps out of the box. While Mirabella have their own branded app on the Play Store, you don’t actually need it; if you’ve got Aldi switches (or other brands using the Sonoff-type switch) already, you can use your existing app to simply add the new switch to your existing setup.
I did precisely this tonight; I set up a Mirabella Genio switch within the Medion Life app (I don’t need another smart app clogging up my phone) with no issues, and it showed up in Google Assistant on my phone and home devices almost immediately. Couldn’t have been easier.
At $29 each, they’re a bit more expensive than Aldi’s version, but the plus side is that you can buy them today; Aldi’s are long since sold out and won’t likely be sold again. Just head to your local K-Mart and grab as many as you need.
While you’re there, there’s a range of smart bulbs with standard fixtures too, so you can replace some of your lights with their smarter cousins for easy control from your phone or connected assistants.
Amazon have Jinvoo, 2 for $21, work perfectly well. Make sure your switches are connected to 2.4 GHZ and that your phone is on the same network.
What a piece of junk. Bought one today and it doesn’t do any single thing the instructions say it should. Won’t connect won’t flash. No support unless you install another app and give them Admin access over your phone!
Hi i just bought the genio bulbs for mu column lights at the front of my house and cant connect them. It keeps saying cannot pair. I rang mirabella and they said it could be that the internet ia on 5 instead of 2.5 or whatever it needs to be haha. Tried again tonight and noticed when trying to pair one light stops blinking after a while but the other keeps flashing. Does this mean i need to set up each bulb one by one even though they are both linked to one switch? Some help would be greatly appreciated.
Does anyone know what ports to unblock on my firewall? I don’t seem to be able to connect from behind my firewall… Also the app lists a bunch of other stuff like kettles. Anyone seen any other devices for sale?
I had assumed that they just need to be able to access a web point somewhere on the internet, but it is possible they need to have access on other ports as well. It would be worth watching what one of these switches does with wireshark to see how they work.
Kmart website says “product no longer available” for the switches. 🙁 They were out of stock last week when I went in and I was hoping they’d have more stock by now. The light bulbs are still available though
There’s plenty of other places that sell switches that are compatible with the same app, including Bunnings. I’ve seen them elsewhere but I can’t remember where off the top of my head.
They also support IFTTT
Can anyone confirm this? Bought a few bulbs today and I can’t find the service in IFTTT.
You link them through the Tuya Smart settings if memory serves. I don’t use them with IFTTT, just Assistant.
I’ve got a few TP-Link switches and, while great, the size is a problem as they effectively prevent cover the adjacent socket rendering a double wall socket a single. The Genio ones look like they wouldn’t have that problem?
However, I’ve only got so many things plugged into wall outlets that I need to remotely control. What frustrates me in the smart home space is the American market has smart light switches, so you can replace your existing light switches and have smart lights through out the house. I wish similar products were available here,
100%, I’ve been saying for a while smart light switches and the options for aussies would be a great topic for Ausdroid to do an article on.
I have Belkin Wemo light switches. They work great.
Wemo light bulbs on the other hand…
The issue is in America you can install your own light switches.
Here the law is you need an electrician to do it, so they don’t sell that well.
Retailers can’t sell what doesn’t exist. I suspect it’s more a case of unique Australian Standards and small market so no one has made them for us. The cost for an electrician to directly replace a bunch of light switches is minimal.
You can buy smart switches from Banggood.com, but you need 3 wires for the lights. We only have 2 wires unless you have a new house.
I believe Sonoff makes an AU standard light switch. https://www.itead.cc/smart-home/sonoff-t1-us.html
They are from Sonoff.
Yes there are some available in Australia. You can google “SAL PIXIE” and find those smart switches in electrical wholesalers.
I haven’t been keen on the idea of WiFi smart devices (since they can clog up your WiFi network) but since I heard about these bulbs just the other day, I have been very tempted to buy some and integrate in Home-Assistant. They seem to be at a good price point.
Note that Big W also list them, slightly more expensive, but they aren’t available in stores yet. Maybe our options for ‘smart’ things are going to get getting better and cheaper in the not too distant future.
What’s worse? A smart appliance using one of your WiFi channels, or a smart appliance using the ZigBee protocol, which transmits on the same frequency as your WiFi?
True, but I have a zwave hub and switching, it’s just too damn expensive.
Whytey, I have been using my zwave controller and adding lifx and RM Pro plugins to integrate the whole thing. I agree with zwave being a little too expensive for what it is. But with Smart Things finally making it to our shores, it may make zwave devices cheaper
I’m no expert, but I would think that the bulb or switch would only use a second of the WiFi channel to turn itself on or off. I have 8 Belkin WeMo smart devices (5 switches and 3 sensors), one TP-Link smart bulb and 4 IP WiFi cameras using the NBN (“50 Mbps”) modem router supplied by Telstra. And I can still stream movies. So unless Ausdroid says otherwise there’s nothing stopping you getting as many smart switches as you want. Although be wary of the width of these switches. My WeMo switches are too wide for a normal Australian… Read more »
Clog up your WiFi network? How so? These smart switches don’t transmit/receive a lot of data (even when you’re using them), and yes while they’ll use up an IP address on your home network, there’s a good chance you’ve got 253 usable IP addresses on your standard home router (and, if you’re comfortable editing some settings, you can easily extend that to thousands if need be). They also don’t even draw a lot of power, because most of the time they’re doing nothing. Sensibo devices, on the other hand, do quite frequently poll their cloud service but even then the… Read more »
My knowledge might be well out of date now, but it used to be good practice to reduce the number of clients running on your Access Point as much as practicable. Even if they weren’t actively transmitting, additional clients would cause overhead to maintain connection with the network which overall would cause your network to slow down.
https://www.lifewire.com/how-many-devices-can-share-a-wifi-network-818298
https://blog.netgear.com/blog/more-devices-slow-wifi-step-up-to-ac-wireless-technology/
i divide smart devices by putting them on 2.4 ghz and put all mobiles and tablets into 5 ghz. just to avoid any clog. And most of them support 2.4 only so happy atm (i only have 12 smart devices)
Also you could try a smart bulb for as little as $15 (up to $25/$29) at Kmart.
https://www.kmart.com.au/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/SearchDisplay?searchTerm=genio&categoryId=&storeId=10701&catalogId=10102&langId=-1&pageSize=30&beginIndex=0&sType=SimpleSearch&resultCatEntryType=2&showResultsPage=true&searchSource=Q&pageView=