Comment by azinman2
2 days ago
Anyone know if the older Wemo products (the switches) work any other way? My understanding was that they required cloud. I believe my home bridge Wemo plugin uses the cloud to talk to the devices, but maybe I’m wrong.
2 days ago
Anyone know if the older Wemo products (the switches) work any other way? My understanding was that they required cloud. I believe my home bridge Wemo plugin uses the cloud to talk to the devices, but maybe I’m wrong.
They don't require the cloud if all you want to do is turn them on or off. You can send SOAP requests to them, or use OpenHAB, HomeAssistant, etc... to control what you have, but longer term it might be a good idea to invest in Tasmota or ESPhome switches if you have technical knowledge. Paying up for Lutron might be a more long term solution if you want hands off, though they don't have the device coverage that Wemo had.
https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/wemo/
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/wemo/
It seems pretty unclear what is happening with the app. The article says
> After this date, several Wemo products will no longer be controllable through the Wemo app.
That makes it sound like some Wemo products will still be controllable through the Wemo app. But when you read the rest of the article, there are zero details that indicate this, or even imply it. This bit seems to contradict that notion entirely
> The Wemo app will no longer be updated after January 31, 2026, and can manually be removed from your smart device.
It would be great if these devices could still be controlled/configured locally via the app, but I'm guessing that won't be the case. If they froze the functionality in time, I wouldn't be as unhappy. But if they're basically turning their products into bricks, I'm pretty not thrilled.
At least with the older devices, all the app does is a upnp broadcast to find the wemos, and then issue SOAP requests to turn them on/off. The app will work without an internet connection - you can verify this by disabling your internet and checking. If you need automation or firmware updates, or possibly with some of their newer devices, then you need the internet connection. So just keep the app around (back it up or download from f-droid if on android).
Older Wemo switches can work locally with Home Assistant using the wemo integration, which communicates via UPnP without cloud dependency. You can also flash some models with alternative firmware like Tasmota if you're comfortable with that.
Any good youtube videos you'd suggest for how to do this? I haven't taken the leap to using HA, but have heard good things and considered it. If it would keep my old Wemos alive, I'd do it!
I have wondered about this also. I noticed that some of my older plugs seem to keep on chugging even when internet is out. I am guessing they have some internal clock that they fall back on when the internet is not available. However, this would only work until the first power outage happens, at which point they would no longer know what time it is, and there would be no way to reconnect to them via the Wemo app to sync up their internal clocks.