SONOFF POW Ring Review – A WiFi CT Clamp power meter tested with eWelink and Home Assistant

SONOFF POW Ring review

The trend of measuring the energy usage of household electrical devices has become increasingly popular among Smart Home users in the past few years. We have received the new SONOFF POW Ring Smart Power Meter Switch device for review from ITEAD. Unlike SONOFF’s existing energy monitoring devices such as POW Elite, SPM, DualR3, POW3, and POW Origin, this new device, also called POWCT, utilizes a current transformer (CT) to measure the current flow, or total power being consumed. This method provides no physical contact with live wires and reduces the risk during installation. Additionally, it can measure currents of up to 100A, which is significantly higher than previous models. This makes it suitable for measuring electricity usage at the main circuit breaker, energy generated from solar panels, or even for Electric Vehicle (EV) home chargers. The SONOFF POW Ring, which we are testing today, is not only a Smart Power […]

$35 SONOFF POW ring smart power meter (POWCT) safely supports up to 100A

SONOFF POW Ring smart power meter

SONOFF POW Ring smart power meter is the first CT clamp-based WiFi power meter from ITEAD. It is designed for installation in an electric cabinet to measure whole-house power consumption with up to 100A current. The power meter relies on an ESP32 microcontroller for control and wireless connectivity with a range of up to 130 meters thanks to an external high-gain antenna. It is supported by the usual eWelink mobile app that also enables integration with Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and IFTTT services, and ITEAD also mentions integration with the Home Assistant open-source framework. SONOFF POW Ring (POWCT) specifications: MCU – ESP32 WiFi and Bluetooth microcontroller Connectivity – 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 (802.11b/g/n) with SMA antenna connector for an external antenna to be placed outside of the electrical cabinet Current transformer (CT) interface type – RJ9 Current transformer detection range – 0 to 100A Measurement category – CAT II 0-100A […]

Linux 6.8 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.8 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.8 on the Linux kernel mailing list: So it took a bit longer for the commit counts to come down this release than I tend to prefer, but a lot of that seemed to be about various selftest updates (networking in particular) rather than any actual real sign of problems. And the last two weeks have been pretty quiet, so I feel there’s no real reason to delay 6.8. We always have some straggling work, and we’ll end up having some of it pushed to stable rather than hold up the new code. Nothing worrisome enough to keep the regular release schedule from happening. As usual, the shortlog below is just for the last week since rc7, the overall changes in 6.8 are obviously much much bigger. This is not the historically big release that 6.7 was – we seem to […]

Review of SONOFF SNZB-03P new Zigbee motion sensor with eWelink and Home Assistant

Sonoff SNZB-03P Cover

SONOFF continues to release new Zigbee products series including the wireless switches/buttons (SNZB-01P) and temperature and humidity sensors (SNZB-02P) that we reviewed last year. Today, we will review another new sensor, that is the Zigbee 3.0 motion sensor (SNZB-03P) and we’ll need a Zigbee Hub/Bridge/Dongle to receive Zigbee signals to make it work. The technology of this sensor remains PIR, which uses infrared waves similar to before. This is different from the Human Presence sensors that are gaining popularity, which use mmWave (millimeter wave, frequency 3-30GHz). Both types have their pros and cons. SONOFF has also recently released a Human Presence sensor, namely the SNZB-06P which we will review soon. The SONOFF SNZB-03P is suitable for applications where motion needs to be detected (staying standstill won’t work) and places where it is not feasible or practical to run power cables. The latter is advantageous compared to Human Presence sensors because […]

2023 Year in review – Top 10 posts, statistics, and what to expect in 2024

CNX Software Happy New Year 2024

It’s the last day and last article of the year, so we will look at some highlights of 2023, some traffic statistics on the CNX Software website, and speculate what interesting developments may happen in 2024. Looking back at 2023 The semiconductor shortage that had happened since 2020 started to fade away in early 2023, and supplies for most electronics components and devices seem to be adequate at this time, so that was a bright spot this year, and hopefully, it will stay that way in 2024 despite geopolitical tensions. We did not have any super exciting new Arm application processors from Rockchip, Amlogic, or Allwinner announced this year, although the Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 CPU started to show up in some 8K TV boxes. The launch of the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC with a Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor was probably the main highlight for Arm on this side […]

SONOFF iPlug S60 – A $10.9 compact WiFi smart socket with built-in energy monitoring function

SONOFF iPlug

SONOFF iPlug S60 is a compact ESP32-C3-based WiFi smart socket with built-in energy monitoring support and available with either Type E/F or Type G prongs for respectively European and British markets, as well as other countries using those types of sockets. ITEAD has manufactured home automation devices that measure power consumption for years, such as the SONOFF POW switch directly connected to the mains or the SONOFF S31 smart socket, but those are/were much larger devices, and the new SONOFF iPlus S60 is fairly small and barely larger than some other smart sockets that lack an energy monitoring function, whiling handling up to 16A or 4,000W at 220-250V. SONOFF iPlug specifications: Wireless MCU – ESP32-C3 RISC-V microcontroller with 2.4GHz WiFi 4 802.11b/g/n  S60TPG Plug type – Type G (UK) Input – 250V, 50/60Hz, 13A max Max load –  3,250 Watts Dimensions – 58 x 58 x 42 mm Weight – […]

Review of SONOFF BASICR4 Smart Switch and S-MATE2 Smart Remote Control

Sonoff SMATE-2 + BASICR4 automation demo

We’ve received two new devices from SONOFF for testing, namely the BASICR4 Smart Switch and the S-MATE2 Smart Remote Control. For those familiar with SONOFF devices, the Basic series is well-known as it was one of the initial products SONOFF introduced to the Smart Home market. It’s a Wi-Fi switch that can be used for various purposes, including controlling lights, fans, and other electrical devices. The BASICR4 model enhances capabilities while reducing costs compared to its predecessor. The S-MATE2, on the other hand, is the second version of a simple Remote Controller powered by batteries. It wirelessly connects to other SONOFF devices that support the eWeLink Remote Gateway feature, enabling full control within the same ecosystem. This expands its usability across different devices. Let’s delve into the details. SONOFF BASICR4 Introduction The Basic series has been a long-standing Wi-Fi Switch family allowing control of electrical devices through the eWeLink app […]

Giveaway Week 2023 winners announced!

CNX Software Giveaway Week 2023 Prizes

CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2023 is now over and we’re ready to announce the winners. We offered some of the review samples we tested (or not) in the last year, and like the last two years, we were also joined by RAKwireless who offered two IoT development kits. All items given away are shown in the photo below, minus some accessories, and if you count more than seven you’d be right, as some are kits with multiple items like the GL.iNet GL-S200 Thread Border router which comes with three development boards, and more importantly, we also organized Giveaway Week on CNX Software Thailand for the second year running. We had seven winners on CNX Software: VOIPAC iMX8M industrial development kit – Kraingsak, Thailand TBS7901 mini PCIe DVB-S2X/S2 module  – Frank, Singapore RAKWireless WisBlock IoT Starter Kit – Andy, Russia GL.iNet GL-S200 Thread Border router kit – Augustin, Argentina WCH CH583M-R0-1v1 […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case