Back in September, I posted about the impending launch of the Belkin WeMo Switch - a WiFi enabled switch into which you can plug any appliance and control the "on" or "off" settings not just by WiFi, but by using an iOS device through the mobile phone network (sorry Android users...they say they're going to come up with something for you some time in the future).They've just started arriving in stores and Harvey Norman and Apple's online store currently have stock.
This isn't a wonderfully methodically dissection of my experience, but a quick overview for those of you who may find this kind of thing useful. Like many (most?) on the forum, my machine takes a longish time to warm up adequately. As I do a lot of work with clients in town and come home at varied times, this means I can now leave a meeting and hit the "on" switch and have the machine ready to go when I get home and should also help save energy by being able to turn it off more easily if I've forgotten to switch it off before leaving home.Up until now I've used a programmable HPM 7 Day digital timer, which has been great. The WeMo can do everything it did, in terms of setting up programs (or, "Rules", in WeMo-speak) to turn it on and off in the mornings. And of course, it can do a lot more. That said, one nice feature of the timer that I'll miss was its clock, which included seconds, allowing me to time shots. But it's worth it (and I've got an old timer that I can haul out of the drawer, as a replacement).So, first thoughts:One of the nice things about the switch is that despite having lots of functionality (including IFTTT) on opening the box you see that Belkin's done everything possible to keep things dead simple. There's the switch (with 2 status lights and 2 user operate-able switches), a concise, 4 step quick start guide and an almost equally concise product guide. As someone who works with human-centred design and development of new products, this was a joy to see.
But it wasn't all plain sailing.
I had to go through the process of setting up the Switch a few times, before my iPhone was able to find the device consistently. A Belkin troubleshooting video references the fact that "some routers" simply don't recognise the device without going through a few install attempts. I found this vague reference a bit unsettling -- why, and how would I know that once it did recognise it, that it wouldn't randomly fail to so in the future?!. Anyway, it finally worked. I was happy. Until I ventured forth...
Once I was out of WiFi range, I turned on the app to see if it could see the switch. It couldn't. The menu showed the switch, with a message "Not detected", below it. I followed the various troubleshooting suggestions, such as quitting the app, rebooting my iPhone, resetting the switch (requiring fresh round of setups), rebooting the router. No joy.
I'd previously read numerous references to this problem online and hoped that this was something that was limited to people with quirkier network setups. Mine is pretty straight-forward, so I'd been optimistic that it would all be fine. To make a long story short, I found a reference to uninstalling the WeMo app from the iOS device and reinstalling (and, yet again, resetting up the device), so I did this. I'd downloaded the app a few weeks ago, to familiarise myself with it before the switch was available in stores, so this might have been the cause of the problem. Anyway, a fresh install on the iPhone did the trick and I've now got it working, both within WiFi range and remotely.

A few other observations:
One of the other unsettling aspects is that management of the service occurs through Belkin's own servers. I'm not technically literate in the how this works, but I suspect this was a trade-off deemed worthwhile to keep setup relatively simple.
While the "rules" are easily set up, using a tab at the bottom of the app, I'd entered in 2 rules, then later in the day, added a further one. When I completed the third, my other 2 rules simply vanished and had to be re-entered. Weird.
From pics online, the WeMo looked to be roughly the same size as the HPM device, but it's actually bigger. Hopefully it'll shrink as the product evolves.
----
Like lots of tech products, the pain is in the setup and persistence is worth it. That seems to be the case with WeMo...so far. Getting up and running wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped, but I'm now looking forward to using it. I'll follow up with more info after I've been using it for a while, to update on whether it's been stable and how things perform. Fingers crossed, but it's now looking very, very good.
This isn't a wonderfully methodically dissection of my experience, but a quick overview for those of you who may find this kind of thing useful. Like many (most?) on the forum, my machine takes a longish time to warm up adequately. As I do a lot of work with clients in town and come home at varied times, this means I can now leave a meeting and hit the "on" switch and have the machine ready to go when I get home and should also help save energy by being able to turn it off more easily if I've forgotten to switch it off before leaving home.Up until now I've used a programmable HPM 7 Day digital timer, which has been great. The WeMo can do everything it did, in terms of setting up programs (or, "Rules", in WeMo-speak) to turn it on and off in the mornings. And of course, it can do a lot more. That said, one nice feature of the timer that I'll miss was its clock, which included seconds, allowing me to time shots. But it's worth it (and I've got an old timer that I can haul out of the drawer, as a replacement).So, first thoughts:One of the nice things about the switch is that despite having lots of functionality (including IFTTT) on opening the box you see that Belkin's done everything possible to keep things dead simple. There's the switch (with 2 status lights and 2 user operate-able switches), a concise, 4 step quick start guide and an almost equally concise product guide. As someone who works with human-centred design and development of new products, this was a joy to see.
But it wasn't all plain sailing.
I had to go through the process of setting up the Switch a few times, before my iPhone was able to find the device consistently. A Belkin troubleshooting video references the fact that "some routers" simply don't recognise the device without going through a few install attempts. I found this vague reference a bit unsettling -- why, and how would I know that once it did recognise it, that it wouldn't randomly fail to so in the future?!. Anyway, it finally worked. I was happy. Until I ventured forth...
Once I was out of WiFi range, I turned on the app to see if it could see the switch. It couldn't. The menu showed the switch, with a message "Not detected", below it. I followed the various troubleshooting suggestions, such as quitting the app, rebooting my iPhone, resetting the switch (requiring fresh round of setups), rebooting the router. No joy.
I'd previously read numerous references to this problem online and hoped that this was something that was limited to people with quirkier network setups. Mine is pretty straight-forward, so I'd been optimistic that it would all be fine. To make a long story short, I found a reference to uninstalling the WeMo app from the iOS device and reinstalling (and, yet again, resetting up the device), so I did this. I'd downloaded the app a few weeks ago, to familiarise myself with it before the switch was available in stores, so this might have been the cause of the problem. Anyway, a fresh install on the iPhone did the trick and I've now got it working, both within WiFi range and remotely.
A few other observations:
One of the other unsettling aspects is that management of the service occurs through Belkin's own servers. I'm not technically literate in the how this works, but I suspect this was a trade-off deemed worthwhile to keep setup relatively simple.
While the "rules" are easily set up, using a tab at the bottom of the app, I'd entered in 2 rules, then later in the day, added a further one. When I completed the third, my other 2 rules simply vanished and had to be re-entered. Weird.
From pics online, the WeMo looked to be roughly the same size as the HPM device, but it's actually bigger. Hopefully it'll shrink as the product evolves.
----
Like lots of tech products, the pain is in the setup and persistence is worth it. That seems to be the case with WeMo...so far. Getting up and running wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped, but I'm now looking forward to using it. I'll follow up with more info after I've been using it for a while, to update on whether it's been stable and how things perform. Fingers crossed, but it's now looking very, very good.

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