Glad I’m not the only one who is confused. At first I thought it is a 802.11 <-> powerline <-> CAT5 access point, but apparently it is a "X10-like" powerstrip with WiFi. I think?
can you access the power outlets with the device connected only to the wifi network and host w/the mFi software turned off? or do I always have to have a host computer running?
Yes, this is possible. In fact, you can use the unit without even linking it to a mFi host. (Though you do need the mFi host to upgrade the firmware on the mPower, you can always uninstall the mFi from the host computer afterwards)
I wrote a little library which will SSH into the mPower and run the appropriate commands to enable read/write, toggle the acutators, and sample the ports. It can be found here: https://github.com/dansimpson/mfi
This product is really interesting because it's very similar to my Bachelor of Science thesis where we, between January and May of this year, made a working prototype of a smart power strip that (over WiFi) reports power consumption for its outlets to a Web server, and of course allows for remote controlling the state of the outlets on the website. The hardware has an 8-bit AVR microcontroller, WiFi, solid-state relays and measurement hardware on a custom PCB. The website uses Django and supports multiple users and multiple power strips per user (unfortunately we've only made one final prototype so far), and some basic automation functionality (though we didn't have time to implement most of our automation ideas, for example a location-aware smartphone app or IFTTT integration). I don't know if it interests anyone, but I'll provide a link to the report we wrote: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7zal1ajnhs0nnad/A_Smart_...
I've been checking a lot of these home automation devices recently. Some years ago I had simple and cheap remote controlled power sockets, and I've been waiting for some progress and a standard to emerge. I remembered checking these specific Ubiquity devices, read about the Java software, but somehow missed the SSH functionality.
I'm very interested in the openness of these devices, as I could write my own open-source software to run on an ARM mini-server or even a Meego/Sailfish phone application instead of being stuck with some closed and highly proprietary platform. It would also make it easier to check if some basic security has been implemented so hijacking these gadgets won't be too easy.
I hope some sort of standard emerges for these kind of devices and the sort of "intelligent" light bulbs like LIFX and Phillips Hue though, as a zillion different protocols, remotes and apps would ruin the experience and make life harder rather than easier.
Does the review even really matter? If you buy Mac products you're going to buy Mac products. IT's always the same thing and there's never any choice. Review isn't really necessary.
Ganesh hasn't done any Apple reviews in at least at year; his review of this product has nothing to do with Anand finding time to write a review about the MBP.
With the dive in quality that the reviews on this site have taken lately, that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it used to.
I _bet_ the MBP review won't address the well documented and quite severe "yellow tint" screen issue because it won’t be there on their cherry picked review sample and "testing" the Xbox One is evidently more important than biting the hands that feed this site.
I'll give you the gist of that review. It looks like last year's MacBook Pro, has Haswell and has better battery life, a PCIe SSD. A bit better GPU performance, almost the same CPU performance.
Why do I need these kind of device? . Apparently, we cannot use it to control computers. My TV and home theater receiver are just in standby which use less than 5W in total. We do need to control the lights but we need wifi-enable switch for that. What else do we need it for?
I'd actually like to use it with my fish tank. There's a lot of parameters to control that run on electricity, including light, bubblers, filters, and heat that can effect the water. This matters a lot in smaller tanks especially, if one parameter goes out of whack unsupervised, your whole tank could die in a few hours. The fact that this is open source and hackable and controllable means I could implement it in my probes and measurements to automatically adjust as needed.
This strikes me as a product that has more practical application in the enterprise and business environments than at home, though.
Why not use an Arduino and some peripherals if you're going to write your own code? Most of the use cases I see that require using your own custom code with these mFi products can be done with simple microcontroller boards and accessories.
I'm intrigued by it for controlling some relatively dumb devices that draw a lot of power, like space heaters, a dehumidifier and a floor-standing AC unit. With this, a cheap wireless weather and temp/humidity system I've already hacked, and a few scripts, I could easily start controlling things based on things like presence, differences between indoor and outdoor temps, etc.
That obviously isn't something your average person is going to do, but it isn't hard to imagine that sort of thing becoming turn-key.
When my home server (which I use as my personal cloud) hard-locks when I'm on the road, it would be nice to power-cycle it remotely. This will let me do that, so I ordered it.
Sample size of one, but there are people that can use this kind of device.
Why is your server crashing like that and often enough for you to consider getting the mPower? You should probably fix that first before looking into the last resort power cycling solution.
I feel like an important piece of information is missing. How much does the mFi mPower ITSELF user in terms of power. It sounds interesting and I certainly have tons of ideas on how I could use it (or other could). However, a large part of that would be power savings.
If the thing burns 5w of power though...that just might tip it from possibly saving power in some usage scenarios to burning more power than it saves.
Last weekend I found a similar product from quirky at home depot. In conjunction with GE they have a line of wifi connected products, including a sensor, egg monitor, guage dashboard, and a power strip with two outlets that can be remotely switched from an iOS or Android device. The cool thing is to program them you "blink" them by holding a smartphone screen against a sensor that detects a flashing sequence on the screen. This is based on tech from Electric Imp which developed the chipset and has a developer kit and SDK for building your own devices.
I bought the power strip for fun, but with an eye to controlling the xmas lights, so I can have them on a timer, but also switch on and off on demand.
So how much is the power consumption of the device itself? Can WiFi be turned off on the Pro version? Why does the European version need to be so ugly? Questions and more questions...
Replied to another poster - the power consumption is less than 1 W at idle, but with the network interface up. Wi-Fi can be turned off -- after all, you have SSH access to the unit - you can do anything you want to be done on a persistent basis using some scripts to run on the device at start time.
"The mFi controller software (Windows version) needs rework for better stability"
FTFY. I haven't used the mFi software yet, but UBNT's controller software (Unifi, AirVision, AirControl) is well known for running much better on Linux than Windows. Each product has its own development team, but they pretty much all install great on Linux hosts and start automatically as a service.
Meanwhile, the Windows version tend to suffer from installation difficulties, stability problems, and the number one complaint in the forums probably being the fact that they aren't designed to run as a service, meaning that you have to actually log into Windows and run the executable before you can connect to it. This shortcoming has been worked around by users in the case of most of the products (thank goodness for the open nature of UBNT's software product development), but the "easy" way to use UBNT's software controllers, ironically enough, is to run them on Linux.
I realize Anandtech caters to the Windows crowd, but it's not fair to say that a product is unstable when the Linux version isn't, or incompatible when it's available on Windows, Mac and Linux.
I like ganesh and many of his articles, but this has to be one of your worst articles ever. I really hope you do not fall and.continue to post article of this level because it honestly is a shame to the Anandtech name to have things like this posted.
Ganesh, most UPS have at least ethernet+RS-232, and most I've used connect to a switch or router for management, and a PDU for rack management... This is not new stuff, enabling and disabling power connections, nor are WiFi consoles... I've been doing it since 1995.......
Daimon, I think the integration with mFi which allows rules creation is the primary aspect here. Of course, the reason we even wanted to get this unit in is because of its power measurement capabilities (real-time). And the clincher is the price point!
We have looked around quite a bit for automating our lab infrastructure and measuring power consumption of various devices during different modes of operation. For example, over the last one year, all the power consumption numbers that I have reported have been gathered through the UFO Power Center. In the future, I hope to use either the UFO Power Center or the mPower unit.
Please do point me to any UPS / PDU combo which can solve the remote switching as well as power consumption measurement problem for us at this price point, and I am pretty sure both us and other readers will be happy to check those out.
Checkout Cyberpower and APC; these guys "pure-sine wave" products are leaps and bounds above trip-lite. What you are looking for are their systems which have management consoles; hook to switch with a $2 cat-5 and you're done. Your various sytem/rack-peripheral is offline for maintenance on your own terms. Combine this with IPMI (on your switch)and you manage not only power/power-states/RDP, but you have an IP address for power AND management. Win Win.
Do those vendors have any products which are sub-$200 and can still do real time power measurement? The last I checked, they do have $800 - $1K PDUs with management consoles, and even those do not have real time power measurement capabilities on a per-outlet basis.
I looked into the Cyberpower PowerPanel manual, but it is still not clear whether one can log the power consumed by each outlet at configurable intervals / there is a simple API or HTTP query that one can use to poll these values. There is no information on how often these power consumption values get updated too.
Otherwise, yes, these UPS management softwares seem to be really feature heavy. As I see in the Newegg comments, $170 is not going to give a network port -- but I can definitely see the appeal for the usage scenario where a UPS is required along with remote switching capabilities
For this product, the appeal would lie in the fact that the unit runs Linux, one can run custom scripts inside the unit and finally, for our purpose, provide an idea of real-time power consumption with high accuracy and with open APIs. Other than the UFO Power Center and the mPower units, I can't see other good alternatives for the feature set. (The UFO Power Center doesn't run Linux, though, but, can be accessed through simple HTTP commands)
Oh; these UPS systems manage a fair job of power consumation; it's why they sell so well. 2,500+ 4/5/9U UPS had better be measuring it's own power! Most of these will tell you re: power-draw from their peripheral AC ports. Things like printers should be on non-UPS AC ports; I have a (small) 12U rack, with a 4U desktop, a 2U Co-processor for offline jobs, a 4U storage/NAS system and a 2U cyberpower 1,650-Watt UPS. This Cyberpower UPS will run these things for about 2-hours.
These UPSs monitor individual outlets and can be controlled via Ethernet, serial, or USB, but afaik they cannot switch individual outlets. They power on or off all outlets simultaneously. To get individually switched outlets requires a switched PDU, which is substantially more cost. The mPower can work as a much cheaper PDU.
I think devices like this are great, certainly an emerging market which I appreciate being reviewed. I have been using ubiquiti devices for many years and have found them to be mostly solid hardware with software that may be lacking.
I would like to get my hands on a few of these to play with, currently I also use Kill-A-Watts to measure power consumption and the only power control devices are things I hacked together being driven through a parallel port. These devices would be great for me to turn off devices in other areas of the house - like the upstairs TV and/or Xbox at dinner/bed time. Christmas lights and other lights around the house would also be good. I love being able to turn the thermostats up and down from my phone - this would be a great extension of that.
As for the UPS's. The batteries for my UPS's are in line with the cost of the Pro device. While the UPS is useful for helping with some management features on computer hardware, 90% of the uses for this device would not be well suited by a UPS with management packages.
1) UBNT's history has not been the enterprise space, but in the service provider market. The bulk of their revenue still comes from service providers.
2) The mFi line is targeted towards building automation, not standard consumer home automation.
3) mFi is a whole line of products, not just this device. That said, they still don't have the devices that I am looking for.
4) I don't know if you can run the devices without the controller software, but why would you want to? The software is the best part of the whole thing. You have dozens of these devices and have scripts on the server that read the data that the system collects and can make decisions based upon them.
5) I was a beta tester for mFi, though I don't have a history with building automation systems. In my testing, it has been a good system. It will be a great system when they release the deices I asked for. ;-)
Thanks for your thoughts. Can you let me know what devices you are looking for? I am pretty sure a mFi Thermostat would be well received.. Just wondering what else people want out there.
Yes, you can run the devices without the controller software. For our usecase, we don't want the hassle of running a VM or server hosting the mFi controller -- just need the ability to turn on and off an outlet and do real-time power measurement on the outlets. Yes, if you need the rules, you should use the mFi controller -- but, if they are simple, they could be handled by scripts running on a PC or even on the mPower itself (in certain cases).
I really want a Powerstrip that can operate via 3G as I often find the Router goes belly up approx. once a month. Can't turn the Router of/on again without a working line to the Internet.
In true IT fashion I want to save myself a 40 mile round trip to Work late at night just to turn it off and on again....
That is probably a very niche market :) What I can suggest for you is to get a PC with a 3G SIM slot (The Habey fanless unit we reviewed a couple of months back comes to mind -- I think that was the BIS-6922). Use that as a mFi host, and your problem is solved (and it opens up lots of other possibilities too). That way, your 3G subscription is not just tied to a power-strip, but, can be used to automate your whole office / be used for other purposes too, as the BS-6922 is a complete fanless industrial PC.
From the way this device sounds, you could make a script that runs via a cronjob that would ping several well known sites that generally respond to pings, and if all fail to respond then power cycle the port the router is on. Of course also make certain to log the time, and not power cycle again for X time after.
they absolutely make this, you want what is called and "IP Powerstone" by multi-link inc. They are not much, and they work GREAT! There are a few models, ours is around $100 I believe.
You give it power via a standard computer style power cord and it has two outlets. It is connected via cat5 to your router and you set what sites (up to 5) to ping and how often. If it misses a ping it will wait and try again in a few minutes. If not available then it powercycles the outlets. One at a time, or both. Timing is set by you. I wait 5, then 15, then one hour. After three times you'll possibly have to make the trip.
I use 80 of these at remote locations and they work great! Used to I'd dispatch someone to head to the location where now we just wait. Maybe once every month or two someone has to go onsite now. It used to be weekly with 80+ locations that are remotely controlled!
Hope this helps you, it is an amazing help for us that's for sure!
Been following Anandtech for yeaaarss.. but finally had to say it. Is there an option to view the articles in one page format rather than having to click on drop down for each different section ?
I think it's... cumbersome.. should have an option like HowStuffWorks where you can see the article as a one page (long) article.
That's a small improvement. It would be a great improvement if the Print view would give you the article full screen width and get rid of all the junk on the right. If you want to let readers concentrate on reading an article why include headlines, tweets, etc. on the screen?
Is there any chance of sending an on/off command to the strip without using the dedicated app? I'm thinking, for instance, of turning on a dedicated stereo amplifier over WiFi. I control the XBMC source with a tablet or phone. By creating a Tasker or Llama action (in Android, obviously) I could both switch on the amp and launch the XBMC remote on the device. A similar task could switch the amp off after a period of non-use.
This would be much more difficult if all actions must be handled through the app or SSH only.
So I ordered this from Amazon and have been generally impressed. A few problems, though, one which is quite ironic.
The ironic one first. One of the reasons I bought this tool to help measure my power usage and ultimately reduce it. My home server is basically a Win8.1 box with TeamViewer access. It remains on 24/7 (except for the once a month when it hard locks and I have to power-cycle it, which is the other reason for this mFi power bar). Anyways, my home server generally uses 30W at idle. The simple act of installing the Win8 mFi home server software pushes the CPU utilization up so that it's no longer in low-power idle and my server consumes 60W (as measured by the same power bar, heh). So just tracking my power using the server doubles the consumption of my home server.
Thankfully the mFi server software can be shut down so that it doesn't run 24/7 and the power bar can still be accessed via its IP. And it works great in that case. Easy to turn each outlet off if necessary both from LAN and WAN (using port forwarding on my router).
My other problem with the unit is that it is connected to my home network AND broadcasting its unsecured adhoc network at the same time. There is no apparent way to disable the latter once the former is running. I thought that it would be automatic. In fact, I didn't think it was possible for the device to be connected to my home network and broadcasting an adhoc network simultaneously, but it is. I plan to mess with this further as the device isn't terribly friendly to novices like me.
Overall I'm happy because it does what I need it to, but there are still some issues.
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daar - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Thanks for the review, introduction could use some work when it comes to chunking info about the product, though.darwinosx - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Yeah it's not clear what this product does.ydeer - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Glad I’m not the only one who is confused. At first I thought it is a 802.11 <-> powerline <-> CAT5 access point, but apparently it is a "X10-like" powerstrip with WiFi. I think?eli2k - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
can you access the power outlets with the device connected only to the wifi network and host w/the mFi software turned off? or do I always have to have a host computer running?ganeshts - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Yes, this is possible. In fact, you can use the unit without even linking it to a mFi host. (Though you do need the mFi host to upgrade the firmware on the mPower, you can always uninstall the mFi from the host computer afterwards)simpsond - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - link
I wrote a little library which will SSH into the mPower and run the appropriate commands to enable read/write, toggle the acutators, and sample the ports. It can be found here: https://github.com/dansimpson/mfiPhelerox - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
This product is really interesting because it's very similar to my Bachelor of Science thesis where we, between January and May of this year, made a working prototype of a smart power strip that (over WiFi) reports power consumption for its outlets to a Web server, and of course allows for remote controlling the state of the outlets on the website. The hardware has an 8-bit AVR microcontroller, WiFi, solid-state relays and measurement hardware on a custom PCB. The website uses Django and supports multiple users and multiple power strips per user (unfortunately we've only made one final prototype so far), and some basic automation functionality (though we didn't have time to implement most of our automation ideas, for example a location-aware smartphone app or IFTTT integration). I don't know if it interests anyone, but I'll provide a link to the report we wrote: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7zal1ajnhs0nnad/A_Smart_...Duodecim - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
I've been checking a lot of these home automation devices recently. Some years ago I had simple and cheap remote controlled power sockets, and I've been waiting for some progress and a standard to emerge. I remembered checking these specific Ubiquity devices, read about the Java software, but somehow missed the SSH functionality.I'm very interested in the openness of these devices, as I could write my own open-source software to run on an ARM mini-server or even a Meego/Sailfish phone application instead of being stuck with some closed and highly proprietary platform. It would also make it easier to check if some basic security has been implemented so hijacking these gadgets won't be too easy.
I hope some sort of standard emerges for these kind of devices and the sort of "intelligent" light bulbs like LIFX and Phillips Hue though, as a zillion different protocols, remotes and apps would ruin the experience and make life harder rather than easier.
I like the geek angle in this review, thanks!
Verdant - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
To me, the app glut is the part the ubiquity environment that needs to be solved first...zeebo - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
You're delaying the Macbook Pro review for stuff like a power strip? Come the hell on.Hrel - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Does the review even really matter? If you buy Mac products you're going to buy Mac products. IT's always the same thing and there's never any choice. Review isn't really necessary.melgross - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Very funny. It's sad though, if you keep buying Windows products after you buy the first one.DanNeely - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Ganesh hasn't done any Apple reviews in at least at year; his review of this product has nothing to do with Anand finding time to write a review about the MBP.ydeer - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
With the dive in quality that the reviews on this site have taken lately, that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it used to.I _bet_ the MBP review won't address the well documented and quite severe "yellow tint" screen issue because it won’t be there on their cherry picked review sample and "testing" the Xbox One is evidently more important than biting the hands that feed this site.
Flunk - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
I'll give you the gist of that review. It looks like last year's MacBook Pro, has Haswell and has better battery life, a PCIe SSD. A bit better GPU performance, almost the same CPU performance.Seriously, there are a lot of reviews out there.
stadisticado - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
You realize that more than one person works at Anandtech right? Its not like Anand or Brian personally reviewed this item...jason32 - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
You're going to buy it anyway. Why bother reading reviews?edwpang - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Why do I need these kind of device? . Apparently, we cannot use it to control computers. My TV and home theater receiver are just in standby which use less than 5W in total. We do need to control the lights but we need wifi-enable switch for that. What else do we need it for?alinot - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
I'd actually like to use it with my fish tank. There's a lot of parameters to control that run on electricity, including light, bubblers, filters, and heat that can effect the water. This matters a lot in smaller tanks especially, if one parameter goes out of whack unsupervised, your whole tank could die in a few hours. The fact that this is open source and hackable and controllable means I could implement it in my probes and measurements to automatically adjust as needed.This strikes me as a product that has more practical application in the enterprise and business environments than at home, though.
jason32 - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Why not use an Arduino and some peripherals if you're going to write your own code? Most of the use cases I see that require using your own custom code with these mFi products can be done with simple microcontroller boards and accessories.easp - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
I'm intrigued by it for controlling some relatively dumb devices that draw a lot of power, like space heaters, a dehumidifier and a floor-standing AC unit. With this, a cheap wireless weather and temp/humidity system I've already hacked, and a few scripts, I could easily start controlling things based on things like presence, differences between indoor and outdoor temps, etc.That obviously isn't something your average person is going to do, but it isn't hard to imagine that sort of thing becoming turn-key.
bznotins - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
When my home server (which I use as my personal cloud) hard-locks when I'm on the road, it would be nice to power-cycle it remotely. This will let me do that, so I ordered it.Sample size of one, but there are people that can use this kind of device.
jason32 - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Why is your server crashing like that and often enough for you to consider getting the mPower? You should probably fix that first before looking into the last resort power cycling solution.bznotins - Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - link
It only does it about once a month. Pretty hard to diagnose.But that once a month always seems to be when I'm on the road and can't power-cycle it in-person?
Is this power strip a panacea? No. But my point is that there is a use for it.
azazel1024 - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
I feel like an important piece of information is missing. How much does the mFi mPower ITSELF user in terms of power. It sounds interesting and I certainly have tons of ideas on how I could use it (or other could). However, a large part of that would be power savings.If the thing burns 5w of power though...that just might tip it from possibly saving power in some usage scenarios to burning more power than it saves.
ganeshts - Sunday, November 24, 2013 - link
I will update the article shortly.. It consumes slightly less than 1W when idle.samsp99 - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Last weekend I found a similar product from quirky at home depot. In conjunction with GE they have a line of wifi connected products, including a sensor, egg monitor, guage dashboard, and a power strip with two outlets that can be remotely switched from an iOS or Android device.The cool thing is to program them you "blink" them by holding a smartphone screen against a sensor that detects a flashing sequence on the screen. This is based on tech from Electric Imp which developed the chipset and has a developer kit and SDK for building your own devices.
I bought the power strip for fun, but with an eye to controlling the xmas lights, so I can have them on a timer, but also switch on and off on demand.
Kurge - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Might be moderately interesting if it support Vera. Would be even more interesting if it was a standard power outlet that fits in a normal box.As it stands - meh.
drizzo4shizzo - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Don't plug your wifi router into it...nekoken - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
According to your screenshot this device has 32MB of ram, not 16.I may have to buy one or more of these. This looks like a good way to kick my children off of specific electronic devices remotely. ssh in and BAM!
Daniel Egger - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
So how much is the power consumption of the device itself? Can WiFi be turned off on the Pro version? Why does the European version need to be so ugly? Questions and more questions...ganeshts - Sunday, November 24, 2013 - link
Replied to another poster - the power consumption is less than 1 W at idle, but with the network interface up. Wi-Fi can be turned off -- after all, you have SSH access to the unit - you can do anything you want to be done on a persistent basis using some scripts to run on the device at start time.clarkn0va - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
"The mFi controller software (Windows version) needs rework for better stability"FTFY. I haven't used the mFi software yet, but UBNT's controller software (Unifi, AirVision, AirControl) is well known for running much better on Linux than Windows. Each product has its own development team, but they pretty much all install great on Linux hosts and start automatically as a service.
Meanwhile, the Windows version tend to suffer from installation difficulties, stability problems, and the number one complaint in the forums probably being the fact that they aren't designed to run as a service, meaning that you have to actually log into Windows and run the executable before you can connect to it. This shortcoming has been worked around by users in the case of most of the products (thank goodness for the open nature of UBNT's software product development), but the "easy" way to use UBNT's software controllers, ironically enough, is to run them on Linux.
I realize Anandtech caters to the Windows crowd, but it's not fair to say that a product is unstable when the Linux version isn't, or incompatible when it's available on Windows, Mac and Linux.
dylan522p - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
I like ganesh and many of his articles, but this has to be one of your worst articles ever. I really hope you do not fall and.continue to post article of this level because it honestly is a shame to the Anandtech name to have things like this posted.dac7nco - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Ganesh, most UPS have at least ethernet+RS-232, and most I've used connect to a switch or router for management, and a PDU for rack management... This is not new stuff, enabling and disabling power connections, nor are WiFi consoles... I've been doing it since 1995.......Daimon
ganeshts - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Daimon, I think the integration with mFi which allows rules creation is the primary aspect here. Of course, the reason we even wanted to get this unit in is because of its power measurement capabilities (real-time). And the clincher is the price point!We have looked around quite a bit for automating our lab infrastructure and measuring power consumption of various devices during different modes of operation. For example, over the last one year, all the power consumption numbers that I have reported have been gathered through the UFO Power Center. In the future, I hope to use either the UFO Power Center or the mPower unit.
Please do point me to any UPS / PDU combo which can solve the remote switching as well as power consumption measurement problem for us at this price point, and I am pretty sure both us and other readers will be happy to check those out.
dac7nco - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Checkout Cyberpower and APC; these guys "pure-sine wave" products are leaps and bounds above trip-lite. What you are looking for are their systems which have management consoles; hook to switch with a $2 cat-5 and you're done. Your various sytem/rack-peripheral is offline for maintenance on your own terms. Combine this with IPMI (on your switch)and you manage not only power/power-states/RDP, but you have an IP address for power AND management. Win Win.Daimon
ganeshts - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Do those vendors have any products which are sub-$200 and can still do real time power measurement? The last I checked, they do have $800 - $1K PDUs with management consoles, and even those do not have real time power measurement capabilities on a per-outlet basis.dac7nco - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Yep. USB power reporting.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
ganeshts - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
I looked into the Cyberpower PowerPanel manual, but it is still not clear whether one can log the power consumed by each outlet at configurable intervals / there is a simple API or HTTP query that one can use to poll these values. There is no information on how often these power consumption values get updated too.Otherwise, yes, these UPS management softwares seem to be really feature heavy. As I see in the Newegg comments, $170 is not going to give a network port -- but I can definitely see the appeal for the usage scenario where a UPS is required along with remote switching capabilities
For this product, the appeal would lie in the fact that the unit runs Linux, one can run custom scripts inside the unit and finally, for our purpose, provide an idea of real-time power consumption with high accuracy and with open APIs. Other than the UFO Power Center and the mPower units, I can't see other good alternatives for the feature set. (The UFO Power Center doesn't run Linux, though, but, can be accessed through simple HTTP commands)
dac7nco - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Oh; these UPS systems manage a fair job of power consumation; it's why they sell so well. 2,500+ 4/5/9U UPS had better be measuring it's own power! Most of these will tell you re: power-draw from their peripheral AC ports. Things like printers should be on non-UPS AC ports; I have a (small) 12U rack, with a 4U desktop, a 2U Co-processor for offline jobs, a 4U storage/NAS system and a 2U cyberpower 1,650-Watt UPS. This Cyberpower UPS will run these things for about 2-hours.ganeshts - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Can you link me to this exact Cyberpower model which can tell the power draw on the peripheral AC ports ?dac7nco - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/products/ups-syst...dac7nco - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
http://cdn4.tinkertry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/...Jaybus - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - link
These UPSs monitor individual outlets and can be controlled via Ethernet, serial, or USB, but afaik they cannot switch individual outlets. They power on or off all outlets simultaneously. To get individually switched outlets requires a switched PDU, which is substantially more cost. The mPower can work as a much cheaper PDU.processinfo - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
How much power it is using by itself?ganeshts - Sunday, November 24, 2013 - link
Around 1 W with things at idle, but the network interface up.CBRworm - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
I think devices like this are great, certainly an emerging market which I appreciate being reviewed. I have been using ubiquiti devices for many years and have found them to be mostly solid hardware with software that may be lacking.I would like to get my hands on a few of these to play with, currently I also use Kill-A-Watts to measure power consumption and the only power control devices are things I hacked together being driven through a parallel port. These devices would be great for me to turn off devices in other areas of the house - like the upstairs TV and/or Xbox at dinner/bed time. Christmas lights and other lights around the house would also be good. I love being able to turn the thermostats up and down from my phone - this would be a great extension of that.
As for the UPS's. The batteries for my UPS's are in line with the cost of the Pro device. While the UPS is useful for helping with some management features on computer hardware, 90% of the uses for this device would not be well suited by a UPS with management packages.
mhammett - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
A couple things...1) UBNT's history has not been the enterprise space, but in the service provider market. The bulk of their revenue still comes from service providers.
2) The mFi line is targeted towards building automation, not standard consumer home automation.
3) mFi is a whole line of products, not just this device. That said, they still don't have the devices that I am looking for.
4) I don't know if you can run the devices without the controller software, but why would you want to? The software is the best part of the whole thing. You have dozens of these devices and have scripts on the server that read the data that the system collects and can make decisions based upon them.
5) I was a beta tester for mFi, though I don't have a history with building automation systems. In my testing, it has been a good system. It will be a great system when they release the deices I asked for. ;-)
ganeshts - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Thanks for your thoughts. Can you let me know what devices you are looking for? I am pretty sure a mFi Thermostat would be well received.. Just wondering what else people want out there.Yes, you can run the devices without the controller software. For our usecase, we don't want the hassle of running a VM or server hosting the mFi controller -- just need the ability to turn on and off an outlet and do real-time power measurement on the outlets. Yes, if you need the rules, you should use the mFi controller -- but, if they are simple, they could be handled by scripts running on a PC or even on the mPower itself (in certain cases).
profquatermass - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
I really want a Powerstrip that can operate via 3G as I often find the Router goes belly up approx. once a month. Can't turn the Router of/on again without a working line to the Internet.In true IT fashion I want to save myself a 40 mile round trip to Work late at night just to turn it off and on again....
ganeshts - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
That is probably a very niche market :) What I can suggest for you is to get a PC with a 3G SIM slot (The Habey fanless unit we reviewed a couple of months back comes to mind -- I think that was the BIS-6922). Use that as a mFi host, and your problem is solved (and it opens up lots of other possibilities too). That way, your 3G subscription is not just tied to a power-strip, but, can be used to automate your whole office / be used for other purposes too, as the BS-6922 is a complete fanless industrial PC.TheCrackLing - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
From the way this device sounds, you could make a script that runs via a cronjob that would ping several well known sites that generally respond to pings, and if all fail to respond then power cycle the port the router is on. Of course also make certain to log the time, and not power cycle again for X time after.dblagent - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
they absolutely make this, you want what is called and "IP Powerstone" by multi-link inc. They are not much, and they work GREAT! There are a few models, ours is around $100 I believe.You give it power via a standard computer style power cord and it has two outlets. It is connected via cat5 to your router and you set what sites (up to 5) to ping and how often. If it misses a ping it will wait and try again in a few minutes. If not available then it powercycles the outlets. One at a time, or both. Timing is set by you. I wait 5, then 15, then one hour. After three times you'll possibly have to make the trip.
I use 80 of these at remote locations and they work great! Used to I'd dispatch someone to head to the location where now we just wait. Maybe once every month or two someone has to go onsite now. It used to be weekly with 80+ locations that are remotely controlled!
Hope this helps you, it is an amazing help for us that's for sure!
Dantze - Saturday, November 23, 2013 - link
Been following Anandtech for yeaaarss.. but finally had to say it. Is there an option to view the articles in one page format rather than having to click on drop down for each different section ?I think it's... cumbersome.. should have an option like HowStuffWorks where you can see the article as a one page (long) article.
ganeshts - Saturday, November 23, 2013 - link
Click on 'Print this article' at the bottom of the screen :) I thought this was a well-known feature.Dantze - Sunday, November 24, 2013 - link
Thanks that works! :DDBissett - Monday, November 25, 2013 - link
That's a small improvement. It would be a great improvement if the Print view would give you the article full screen width and get rid of all the junk on the right. If you want to let readers concentrate on reading an article why include headlines, tweets, etc. on the screen?Catsweeper - Monday, November 25, 2013 - link
Looks like a great productraptorl3 - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Is there any chance of sending an on/off command to the strip without using the dedicated app? I'm thinking, for instance, of turning on a dedicated stereo amplifier over WiFi. I control the XBMC source with a tablet or phone. By creating a Tasker or Llama action (in Android, obviously) I could both switch on the amp and launch the XBMC remote on the device. A similar task could switch the amp off after a period of non-use.This would be much more difficult if all actions must be handled through the app or SSH only.
bznotins - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
So I ordered this from Amazon and have been generally impressed. A few problems, though, one which is quite ironic.The ironic one first. One of the reasons I bought this tool to help measure my power usage and ultimately reduce it. My home server is basically a Win8.1 box with TeamViewer access. It remains on 24/7 (except for the once a month when it hard locks and I have to power-cycle it, which is the other reason for this mFi power bar). Anyways, my home server generally uses 30W at idle. The simple act of installing the Win8 mFi home server software pushes the CPU utilization up so that it's no longer in low-power idle and my server consumes 60W (as measured by the same power bar, heh). So just tracking my power using the server doubles the consumption of my home server.
Thankfully the mFi server software can be shut down so that it doesn't run 24/7 and the power bar can still be accessed via its IP. And it works great in that case. Easy to turn each outlet off if necessary both from LAN and WAN (using port forwarding on my router).
My other problem with the unit is that it is connected to my home network AND broadcasting its unsecured adhoc network at the same time. There is no apparent way to disable the latter once the former is running. I thought that it would be automatic. In fact, I didn't think it was possible for the device to be connected to my home network and broadcasting an adhoc network simultaneously, but it is. I plan to mess with this further as the device isn't terribly friendly to novices like me.
Overall I'm happy because it does what I need it to, but there are still some issues.