I’m pretty late to the smart home game as I’ve been quite hesitant in having portions of my house open to hacking or snooping. That’s probably just me being paranoid but the last thing I want is for my home to turn against me and kill me while I’m sleeping. All joking aside, I’ve mainly just been lazy and haven’t wanted to go through the hassle of rewiring hardware or setting stuff up. With that said, I’ve decided to take baby steps with my smart home transformation by trying out PureGear’s PureSwitch Wireless Homekit enabled smart plugs. What this device allows you to do is control everyday appliances via an easy to install smart plug that can be controlled with an easy to use iOS app as well as voice commands via Siri.
The PureSwitch kit comes with one wireless smart plug which also has a built in USB charge port (10W/5V/2.1 A output). If you get other PureSwitches, each one will have its own unique pairing code which will be very important later on and we’ll get to that in a bit. The PureSwitch is a compact device that doesn’t take up much space at all. It uses up one outlet space with enough room for you to use the other outlet. This allows you to use 1 plug as your smart plug and the other as a basic plug for other things. You can either plug in 1 device to control or multiple if you use a power strip along with it.
Setup isn’t too difficult once you plug in the hardware. You just need to download the free PureSwitch software which again, is only available on iOS. This will allow you to sync the PureSwitch to your home WiFi network. The setup process here can be a little confusing, but if you just follow the instructions that’s included in the box, you should have no trouble setting it all up. After its all said and done, you can use the app to turn oon and off all your devices that are connected or you can use Siri voice commands to do it as well. For instance, “Siri, turn off outlet 1”.
The only issue I have with the PureSwitch is that I can not use it when I’m away from my home and that’s a fault of my own. I don’t own an Apple TV and that is required for home automation via HomeKit when away from your home. So far, I haven’t really had the need to control my lamp from outside my home, but maybe one day if I get more HomeKit enabled devices, I’ll pick up an Apple TV as well. If you have an Apple TV, you’ll be set and ready to use this away from your home.
Overall, the PureGear PureSwitch was very easy to setup and use. It’s a fairly hassle free experience that works well and does what it says it does. For those who want to ease into home automation, the easiest way to start is with a smart plug like the PureGear PureSwitch.