I’m a lot better informed now – the company formerly called ATHOM now have IoTorero (get it? Iot) branding on their smartplug boxes – and I now have three different types.The boxes all have the same product number on them (confusingly) – Model PG01 – but on the actual plug there are three different descriptions: PG01 V2PG01 V2NPG01 V3 ESP32-C3 And for reference, the AliExpress model I referred to in my last blog entry is the PG01 V2 – ESP8266EX-based – and works very well – so I’ll keep it short – incidentally all three look well-made – tough if you want to open them up as they look well and truly glued – not screws in sight.I’ll get straight onto it – setup starts by putting the plug in a socket or extension – turning off the mobile data on your phone and selecting the tamota-xxxx-xxxx SSID which appears in the phone list.
Minimal effort here – I put in the name of my nearest access point (see previous article) in the web page that appears at address 192.168.4.1 on my phone… then make a note of the updated page with the IP address on my network – quickly before that page disappeared..I then go to the internal address shown, in my browser and the webUI appears.I go down to CONSOLE and in this case enter one line into the console area.
Within seconds the plug is updated and reset – after hitting refresh on my browser, I see the device appear with it’s new hostname.EASY.backlog ssid1 noname; password1 1921682012; mqtthost 192.168.1.20; mqttuser admin; mqttpassword T9quila123; topic athom-pg01-v2-1; hostname athom-pg01-v2-1; devicename athom-pg01-v2-1; friendlyname athom-pg01-v2-1; so53 1; timezone 99; status 5; The topic, hostname, device name and friendlyname are of my choosing as is the MQTT info – that must be set up if you want to use the Tasmota integration in Home Assistant.
Looking at the Tasmota info page in the webUI, this looks identical to the one AliExpress is selling – including processor, flash size etc.For the sake of it, before moving onto the next plug – lets do the OTA update – under main menu FIRMWARE UPDATE – START UPDATE.Done – and the power monitoring shows exactly the same voltage as the one I bought from AliExpress.
That’s comforting – indeed it’s the same device.And now for the V2N… same again, no surprises.Processor and flash storage the same.
I can only imagine the N refers to new hardware inside – maybe an improvement… I’ve asked for clarification.Firmware upgraded – again – no problems.And finally the V3.
This has an ESP32-C3 in it so Bluetooth – not seeing any change in the setup.Exactly the same – BUT the information page shows this is now the more powerful ESP32-C3 (ESP32-C3 rev.4) and 4MB of FLASH – not that the extra power makes much difference given a plug you can’t open up to add extra sensors etc to.Still – if I wanted a PING monitor – see my previous article on the subject, given the older ESP8266-based models, I’d have to install a custom Tasmota – no problem but then a firmware update would wipe out the ping instruction – here in the ESP32, it’s available.
A simple rule set as I used previously would make the results of automatic ping testing in the plug available to an external MQT broker – I like it… so pinging my access point continuously- sets of 4 pings at once with a time gap (let’s say a ping set every 5 minutes), could have it’s uses.WELL.In the Tasmota console… 12:02:16.353 MQT: stat/athom-pg01-v3-1/RESULT = {"Ping":"Done"} 12:02:20.516 MQT: tele/athom-pg01-v3-1/RESULT = {"Ping":{"1.1.1.1":{"Reachable":true,"IP":"1.1.1.1","Success":4,"Timeout":0,"MinTime":40,"MaxTime":47,"AvgTime":42}}} Other than that – same plugs, well made, good looking, no problems – local.
Now if they could just make a version 4 a little slimmer because these smart plugs – like virtually every other smartplug on the market, will not sit side by side on a typical mains extension because of their size.I can wish.IoTorero (Athom) also make these plugs and other products for ESPHome but a semi-savvy user could easily change one of these devices to ESPHome.
Hmm – I have two of the ESP32 models – I might have a tinker.If you want to know more about that… here’s an esphome link.And here’s the Tasmota equivalent with some more useful info about the power monitoring and very low loads..