meross MSS425F Smart Power Strip Review, Home Assistant, Local Control

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In this video we're going to take a look at the meross MSS425F Smart Power Strip, a HomeKit enabled device which we should be able to control locally through Home Assistant
Unlike other countries, finding a 4 socket smart power strip in the UK has been difficult to do
So not surprisingly there are other country specific ones like this
meross MSS425F 4 socket Smart Power Strip
US amzn.to/3HZW9i6
UK amzn.to/44R75bG
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Overview:
This power strip uses Wi-Fi, which I'd prefer not to use, but local control takes precedence for me
It has 4 AC sockets that can be independently controlled, each with their own LED for power status
And it has 4 USB type A sockets which can only be controlled as an entire group but there is a power status LED for that
There is only one manual button which turns the entire power strip on or off
So other than remote control, to turn off an individual device you'd have to unplug it
Another thing to bear in mind is that the manual does warn you to connect this to a 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi and to turn off the 5Ghz radio
The manual mentions only turning 5Ghz off for a while though, suggesting this only affects the initial installation
You get two manuals with this device; a user guide and HomeKit setup guide, plus a disclaimer
Interestingly the Amazon UK site has links to PDFs for these, plus a troubleshooting guide
Add Device To HomeKit:
Home Assistant has a HomeKit Contoller integration
But to add a HomeKit device you have to first add it to HomeKit and then remove it
Home Assistant will then be able to pick it up as an unpaired device
If you have an iPhone for instance it's relatively easy to add this to the Home app as it involves using the QR code on the underside of the power strip
NOTE: Make sure your phone is in the correct Wi-Fi network to begin with and it will rejoin it afterwards
Once the power strip is added you'll then want to remove it
Bear in mind, you don't get a master power controller for this power strip in the Home app, but you do get controls for the AC sockets and USB group
The meross app on the other hand does allow you to turn the entire power strip on and off
Another thing to point out is that you can't make firmware updates through the Home app, as the manual warns
And these issues are going to be the same for Home Assistant
Add Device To Home Assistant:
Now I had problems adding this to Home Assistant as it couldn't detect it
I do have Home Assistant locked down using firewall rules on Proxmox VE and I noticed multicast DNS traffic from the power strip being blocked
So I added a rule to allow access to UDP port 5353 for traffic destined for the multicast group 224.0.0.251
Shortly after doing that, the power strip was detected
So it seems the HomeKit controller is listening out for this type of traffic
To add this into Home Assistant either follow the Notification path or navigate to Settings | Devices & Services
It should show up as a Discovered integration
Click Configure, and you'll be prompted for the pairing code which you'll find next to the QR code on the underside of the power strip
Even if you remove access to the Internet for the power strip and reboot it, I noticed that Home Assistant can still control it, although there might be an initial hiccup until connectivity is reestablished
But this is only my initial test of this device, so I'll have to see if it can survive without Internet access long term
Final thoughts:
Because the sockets can be grouped in Home Assistant I'm not really bothered about not having one central power button
But not being able to update the firmware is a concern
The manual suggests adding the power strip to the meross app afterwards but I found that when I did that, it stopped working in Home Assistant
I was then forced to remove the device from the app and Home Assistant, factory reset it and go through the installation process again
It's not ideal but at least this provides me with the smart power strip that has 4 independent sockets that I need
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2 окт 2024

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Комментарии : 18

@TheBroz 7 месяцев назад

Thanks for the video. I’m just getting into HA and this seems like a bit of a faff. I wonder if any HA compatible strips have been released since.

@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone 7 месяцев назад

You would want Zigbee, Z-Wave or Matter ones I struggled to find any at the time and had to settle for this WiFi one Having said that, I have a TP-Link Kasa one that works with an HA integration The only problem is it only has 3 ports and I needed 4 or more

@7MBoosted 9 месяцев назад

If you want to control the whole thing in home assistant you can create a switch group. That will give you an entity that you can control to turn the whole thing off and on.

@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone 9 месяцев назад

Yes that's a good point actually Oddly enough I just bought their 6 port power strip and grouped some ports together Very useful...

@davecq121 Год назад

Don't understand why you didn't just use the Meross LAN integration in HACS? Far simpler and native rather than messing with Homekit. It gives local access

@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone Год назад

I wasn't aware there was one I should really check HACS more often so thanks for mentioning this The MQTT option in that integration certainly sounds interesting But I prefer not to use vendor apps yet devices need IP addressing, and something had to get them on the LAN I found setting it up in Homekit pretty simple and it got me what I wanted, a device that had an IP and could be controlled locally via HA As interesting as that integration seems, I might start adding more Homekit devices in future so I'll stay on this path for now

@techieboy333 Год назад

It's a Tuya Smart Life compatible product so you could just run the Local Tuya or Tuya Local integrations for local control. It's what I've been doing for year with it's twin USB port predecessor, at least until I broke it all last week somehow. Shame it's not a Zigbee device and even bigger shame that it has no power monitoring.

@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone Год назад

Good to know, thanks for sharing

@Bill_the_Red_Lichtie Год назад

If it was mine, I would be flashing it with Tasmota, I saw support for the 3 port Meross MSS425. No need for the internet ever again 🙂

@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone Год назад

Understandable The main appeal of HA is local control but I don't have many IP devices so I haven't gone down that path yet

@drreality1 Год назад

Cool to know, thanks for the info 😀 Do you have HA on the same vlan as IOT stuff? Cheers

@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone Год назад

Most of my IOT devices are Zigbee or Z-Wave ones and that's what I prefer Ones that are IP based, but cloud controlled are in an isolated guest subnet that can only access the Internet. That includes Alexa devices as well I do have some IP devices in the HA subnet but the software firewall in PVE restricts access although UFW could do that as well So LIFX bulbs for instance, don't have any access to HA, but my ESPresence devices can access the MQTT broker And for this power strip I had to allow mDNS traffic in to get it recognised While some IOT devices could in theory be placed into a separate subnet to HA for extra security, the firewall would still allow the same access as what PVE is doing So unless I get a firewall that can do deep packet inspection and understands all this IOT traffic, I don't think it would make any difference and just add latency

@drreality1 Год назад

@@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone that’s air tight, I like this approach. What I mentally struggle with is where to put HA and devices that communicate with mdns , reflectors are nice work around but not as good as having your casting device on the same network I eventually decided to put TVs , chromecast, HA and mobile phones on the same vlan ! This improved usability dramatically Cheers

@williambravin1254 Год назад

Brilliant I presume that you can control each socket individually in HA within an automation

@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone Год назад

Indeed and that's my goal I need to give these sockets more meaningful names first but then they'll be used in rules in Node-RED as I like to automate turning things off at night I'll also make them available to Alexa through Nabu Casa so that I can turn devices on and off when needed by voice It would have been awesome if they could tell you what the power draw was but I'm still looking for a power strip that can do that

@williambravin1254 Год назад

I would use it for my media environment. I need to turn on the HTPC then wait 7 seconds then turn on the amp. I searched their site n and found they also have a euro plug. I have HA running on proxmox. zigbee and z wave items are on on vlan and wifi and BT devices are on a seperate vlan (my HA environment is simple it will get more complicated next year)