Aqara Wall Outlet H2 UK & HomeKit

[jbuk72]

So I’ve had the Aqara Wall Outlet H2 UK (Dual USB-C) set up in Apple Home using the Zigbee protocol. I have a few observations on how this outlet behaves.

First is the “In Use” feature of Apple Home, I love this feature it lets me find a free socket at a glance in any room. All my other smart sockets that support HomeKit have this feature, It’s really simple, if the socket has a plug in it its shows as In Use even when its powered off. The “In Use” state is separate from the “Power” state.

That said, the Aqara Wall Outlet H2 UK does not correctly support this feature. It only shows as In Use when the socket is powered on but this is not consistent, even with a device pugged in and the socket powered on it can still show it’s not in use. In that case you get an error message from some apps that support Homekit, The screenshot below is from Eve and you can see the error message. I should point out all the sockets with names have that device plugged in.

My LightwaveRF system uses this feature to automatically switch off a power socket when a plug is removed from the socket. I know you should always switch a socket off first but life gets in the way sometimes, we all do silly things from time to time.

The image below is after I removed the plug and re-inserted it, the socket is powered on and this time it shows the “In Use” state as Yes.

EDIT: correct photo added. Sorry!

So it looks like there needs to be some work done with the HomeKit compatibility when using Zigbee. If this was using Matter its worth noting the “in Use” state is not available on matter plugs/sockets.

My second point has been mentioned before in some video reviews. It’s a strange one as there is no logical reason why the USB-C ports are not exposed to HomeKit as a third switchable socket. I have Meross power bars that expose the USB ports as a single switchable socked in Apple Home, they are HomeKit enabled, not Matter.

Let’s hope that future firmware upgrades can sort both these issues so we have full HomeKit support with this product. It’s a little sad that for the price some basic features are missing or implemented incorrectly.

I would love to hear your opinions on this device and how it works for you in Apple Home.

[absent]

As far as I can tell Aqara haven’t implement the “consumer connected” features of Zigbee. Their EU/US smart plugs do, but this outlet appears not to.

[jbuk72]

I don’t have any Smart Plugs from Aqara so I’m not aware of the “consumer connected” features. But seems strange they would not implement the full spec for Homekit especially when it carries the Works with Apple Home badge.

I’m still hoping they will fix this in a firmware upgrade at some point the current implementation as it stands today does not meet the HomeKit specification as quoted below.

Here is the definition of “Outlet in Use” from the HomeKit specification:

• This characteristic describes if the power outlet has an appliance e.g., a floor lamp, physically plugged in. This characteristic is set to True even if the plugged-in appliance is off.

This is a photo of the socket with both devices plugged in and sockets powered on. As you can see from the Aqara app screen shot, the Air Fryer is drawing a small amount of power, it’s connected to wifi so always draws some power. The toaster is not being used. The Eve app shows the Air Fryer outlet is “In Use” that is technically correct as there is a plug in that socket. The toaster does not show and it should as it’s plugged in even when it’s sitting idle.

From what I can work out, the outlet “In Use” appears to record true (Yes) only when the device is drawing power and that is incorrect based on the specification.

You would expect this to be picked up in product testing, if the tester had it connected to Apple Home and was NOT using Matter over Thread.

If I’m honest I can see how it could be missed. But there’s still time to fix it in a future firmware update.