Your smart home may be rife with connected devices, but how well are these devices connected to one another? HiveyPie, which claims to be the first Alexa-controlled smart power strip, wants to make controlling your smart home easier. This Wi-Fi-connected power hub allows you to control a slew of smart devices from a single mobile app by way of a secure connection. Not only can you control the power strip itself, but the HiveyPie app (Android and iOS) will also give you insight into the plugged-in devices’ energy usage.
You can also control the power strip with Alexa, telling the smart assistant to turn various devices on or off by ordering certain sockets to be powered up or down. And as an added bonus, you can also use the HiveyPie as a smart hub to control both Philips and Belkin devices.
The benefit of such a device is its all-in-one design. The downside is it’s pretty bulky and out has four outlets. With the HiveyPie, you won’t have to toggle among various apps in order to control devices made by different manufacturers. That is to say, you can control the brightness of your Philips light or your Belkin router all in one place. Users can make use of the mobile app and control all the features of various smart home appliances all in a single app. Of course, all those smart home appliances must be plugged into HiveyPie for this to work.
The smart power strip also purports to have the ability to automatically detect power wasting based on preset thresholds. That means if one appliance is needlessly draining electricity from a particular socket, HiveyPie can let you know, or automatically shut off its supply. You can power on and off sockets individually or collectively, or just check to make sure you turned the iron off (even if it isn’t a smart iron).
