<shamless brotherly promotion>
I have been lurking around this place for years but never did bother to create an account until now.
I am actually in the process of building out 10 acres in the Colorado Rockies with my own two hands – and some heavy machinery – but I’m still in the solar panels and septic tank stage so I wont be putting up a structure till some time this summer. Once I do, the openHab server is goin’ in right after the drywall.
Anyhow, I finally decided to make an account because my brother just launched his Kickstarter campaign for an IoT electrical outlet he has been working on for the last couple years.
Here’s the link if they let me post it.
Other than shameless fraternal promotion, the reason I’m posting about it here is that it is actually the smart outlet that someone should have already made. The closest one to it is zwave. They have an in-wall outlet that handles 20A and is tamper proof (important to NEC in commercial applications). The problem is they require a separate zwave controller hub. Cody’s (my bro’s) outlet just uses regular old wi-fi. It is fully integrated with IFTTT through the cloud so you can do pretty much anything you want with it. Of course it works easily with Echo and Google Home and has a Google and Apple app. Also, it monitors energy usage and I think that is unique in the smart outlet space. Me and my nephew have a ridiculous amount of fun messin’ with my sister-in-law by telling the bedroom outlet what to do while we play games in the living room 
If you are a full on paranoid nerd like myself, the server software is actually open source so you could home brew your own server and not even need an internet connection to make it work. This is what I plan to do with these when I find the time. Of course, it will still be internet controllable but, just won’t require that connection to still be fully functional from within the network.
So basically it is another IoT receptacle. It’s just better than anything else available on the market. It’s what someone should have made two years ago but they didn’t because they wanted to lock us into their ecosystem.
So basically I’m sayin’ check it out, and let him or me know if ya have any suggestions or criticisms. And, if you like it enough, back it on Kickstarter or send other people that may be interested that direction. Otherwise, his company that has backed it to this point will cut their losses and kill it.
anyhow
</shameless brotherly promotion>
Thanks for listening. I’m sure I’ll be full of questions for all you awesome folks once I get a building up and have somewhere to apply my nerdiness.