Smart plug power data glitches

Can only speak to TP-Link/Kasa, not Wemo, but I suspect they are similar in operation.

  • Sense sends out a UDP broadcast every 2 seconds asking all the smartplugs their status.
  • All receiving smartplugs reply with status packet that includes power.
  • If there are network issues (latency, collisions) or if the Sense monitor is overloaded, data gets lost, and shows up as zero.
  • If you have a switch/access point between the Sense monitor and the smartplug in question, that tries to minimize the effects of broadcast packets, that might also stop information from flowing to the monitor. I have flushed a Netgear managed switch and a mesh system because it was too painful to stop them from “eating” multicast packets.
  • I don’t think there is any real-time checking of incoming smartplug data beyond making sure it came from a legitimate status response packet.
  • The Kasa app doesn’t do any real-time charting so it isn’t helpful in spotting the missed data.
  • You can write your own code to do real-time sampling.
  • @duanetiemann has some pointers to both documentation and code here:
    Anyone have any info on the TP-Link Kasa HS110 Energy Monitoring Plug API - #5 by duanetiemann
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