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 V2
PG01 V2N
PG01 V3 ESP32-C3
Checkout their (still Athom-branded) product page for these plugs and those for non-European countries along with a lot more. And for reference, the AliExpress model I referred to in my last blog entry is indeed the PG01 V2 – ESP8266EX-based – and works very well – so I’ll keep it short – incidentally all three appear well-made – tough if you want to open them up as they are glued tight glued – not screws in sight.
PG01 V2 – I’ll get straight onto it – setup starts by putting the plug into a power socket or extension – turning off the mobile data on your phone and selecting the tasmota-xxxx-xxxx SSID which appears in your phone WiFi 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 made a note of the updated page with the IP address on my network – quickly before that page disappeared..
I then went to the network address shown in the product webGUI, in my browser. Down to CONSOLE and in this case enter one line into the console area. Within seconds the plug was updated and reset – after hitting refresh on my PC browser, I saw 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 entered into the Tasmota console 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 – otherwise the MQTT info is not required.
For the sake of it, before moving onto the next plug – I did the OTA update – under main menu FIRMWARE UPDATE – START UPDATE. Done – and the power monitoring showed exactly the same voltage as the one I bought from AliExpress. That’s comforting – indeed it’s the same device.
PG01 V2N – And now for the V2N model… same again, no surprises – well, there was a big one for me as I’d not read the information on the IoTorero (Athom) site properly. Processor and flash storage the same. The N refers to NO RELAY – took me too long to realise as it has a button and a light like the others. Firmware upgraded – again – no problems. By the time I realised this unit is designed to have always-on output and power monitoring – I’d hit the wrong reset option in the setup and seemingly killed the board..
I should have read the info first (nothing about “no relay” in the 2-sided instructions). However – easily recovered. Anyone who has flashed Tasmota before will find all of this very easy. I’ve since had confirmation from IoTorero that the button and light on the V2N are irrelevant and simply there to simplify manufacturing. That’s why pressing the button repeatedly to reset the unit didn’t do anything… Aways at least glance at the info provided or on the website 🙂 Or better – do what I did and ASK 🙂
PG01 V3 ESP32-C3 – finally the V3 model – this has an ESP32-C3 in it so Bluetooth – no change in the setup. Exactly the same – BUT the information page showed that this is now the more powerful ESP32-C3 (ESP32-C3 rev.4) and 4MB of FLASH – not that the extra power at first glance 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 already available – ok, nothing to do with using the device as a smartplug or power monitoring device but nice to know. A simple rule set as I used in a recent blog entry would make the results of automatic ping testing in the plug available to an external MQTT broker – I like it… so I’m 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.
With my rule in place and turned on, in the Tasmota console I see…
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 operation. 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 European/English 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..
I HAVE seen people compare ESPHOME to TASMOTA saying ESPHOME is easier to integrate into Home Assistant. Really? The new Tasmota’d plugs just appeared in my Home Assistant like magic. Look below…
All three new plugs magically appeared.. it doesn’t get any easier. As for what you can do… I’ve already added a rule into the PG01 V3 – but I digress. Decent power monitoring smartplugs. Right now, the Athom name still appears but that will go completely in favour of the IoTorero brand.