And… it works!

Mostly

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

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.