Josh Hendrickson
Wemo, the maker of well known smart plugs, switches, and more, has a device management problem. Often, setting up multiple Wemo devices and getting them to work together is a difficult, arduous task. That was due to the local control method the company used. But it now it’s fixing that by moving to the cloud.
Going forward, if you’re a new Wemo customer, you’ll need to create a Wemo account to set up your devices. Much like smart home devices from other companies, like Nest, Wyze, or Signify, that account will connect your devices and control them. Previously, Wemo relied on local connections to make that happen.
In theory, that could be a good thing since that connection was still possible even if the cloud went down. But in practice, Wemo’s implementation was troublesome and often failed to connect at all. That led to comments on the Wirecutter site regarding smart plugs, and low app ratings in the Google Play store.
For some people, though, the old method worked fine (and that’s to say nothing of Homekit implementation). The good news is, if you prefer the old way of connecting, you can continue to use it for now. Wemo currently only requires new online accounts for new users. But the company did mention that eventually, everyone will have to convert, though it didn’t provide a timeline. And if you want to make the switch now, you can.
Initially, as reported by Android Police, some users were having trouble switching to the new accounts.
Thanks for the tip! Rebooting one of the switches made the rest pop back up. 🙂
— Jason Lee (ジェイソン•リ) (@jasonandrewlee) May 26, 2020
But a reboot of the connected devices seems to help. Hopefully, Wemo gets everything ironed out soon.
Source: Wemo via Android Police
