Review: Matter-enabled Energy Monitoring Smart Plugs - Meross 315


Matter is coming to fix all your smarthome woes! A single IoT standard, working across multiple radio protocols, bringing together different products from many different manufacturers.

And… it works!

Mostly

These are the Meross 315 Smart Plugs. They are small(ish), cheap(ish), and easy(ish) to use.

A pair of plugs in their box with a leaflet about Matter.

As soon as I plugged them in, before even configuring them, my home went crazy. I got a pop-up on my phone asking if I wanted to control them with Google Home.

Screenshot of Google trying to get me to choose an app and offering Google Home as a default.

Nope!

I then immediately got an email from Amazon saying our Echo had detected the device and perhaps I wanted to use that to control the plugs?

Email from Amazon saying they'd found a new device nearby.

Also nope!

I wanted to add the plugs using the Meross app. Not because it is particularly good (it's basically fine) - but because of a couple of limitations in Matter. Here's a page from the plugs' manual.

You may think you don't need the Meross app while you are using the other platform app. Well, that's not the case. The platform app won't inform you there's new firmware available or upgrade the device while the Meross app will; Advanced features like power statistics are not defined in the Matter protocol but the Meross app has them; Most importantly, the Meross app can help you find your lost Matter setup code when you need to set up Matter again. Then how to use the Meross app? You can set up your smart device in the Meross app, and add it to other platforms with Multi-Admin control.

At the moment, Matter doesn't support firmware updates. That's probably fair. You don't want some random app bricking your device - so it is restricted to the manufacturer's app.

But Matter also doesn't support energy monitoring. I understand it's early days for the protocol, but that's a bit annoying.

Luckily, HomeAssistant came to the rescue! Because the Meross API is well documented, my local SmartHome Pi was able to get a realtime view of how much power was flowing through the plug.

Minor irritations

The power toggle - and activity LED - is on the left side of the plug. That makes it a little awkward to press and obscures the view of the LED. I guess putting it on top would make it too easy to accidentally activate?

Two plugs side by side.

The energy monitoring doesn't seem to update in realtime in the app.

I renamed the plug in the Android app, but that name doesn't seem to be exposed in Matter. Nor was it picked up by HomeAssistant.

In order to connect the device to WiFi, your phone needs to be on that specific WiFi network. Because the devices only support 2.4GHz, I needed to swap SSIDs on my phone. But, on the plus side, I didn't have to manually enter any passwords.

But these are all fairly minor complaints.

Verdict

For about £32 for a two-pack (depending on whether the algorithm favours you) these are pretty good value for money. They were easy to set up, quick to get working in other apps, and had a firmware update waiting for me.

Screenshot describing the firmware update. Mostly bug fixes.

I got some Meross plugs about 6 years ago and they've kept trucking all that time - so I'm pretty confident these will last. And, even if Meross disappears, Matter means that another app can easily control them.

Next Steps

Here's the plan. I'm going to plug this into my Tumble Dryer and tell HomeAssistant to monitor its energy usage and send me a message when the drying is done.

Verdict

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5 thoughts on “Review: Matter-enabled Energy Monitoring Smart Plugs - Meross 315”

  1. Tony says:

    I'd still go with zigbee for the present. Z2M even does firmware updates. Matter seems to be quite basic at present, and I worry about real world compatibility - my various google devices are supposed to be matter enabled but homeassistant can't see a single one of them..

    Reply
  2. says:

    Matter as a standard does support Firmware updates, however not all manufactuers have chosen to use it, especially where they also have their own propriatary applications on the device as well as the Matter stack.

    Reply

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