Hi folks,
We were about to go onto the line when we got this announcement from TT. You couldn’t make it up. The costs of making the new plug have now tripled.
We have been advised by TT to pause until freight costs comes down from its current 10x increase and Silicon drops from its current 5x increase.
As we are now in unknown territory, we have halted all orders from our website until we get better news.
It has been a horrible few years – they say startups are hard, connected hardware startups are literally 10 times harder – speaking from experience.
If you have any of these WIFIPLUG smart plugs – they will be disconnected from our server on Jan 4th 2022 as discussed in detail in our blog from Jan 4th 2021. All WIFIPLUG HOME plugs will still be accessible from the Apple Home app.
If you don’t know which plug you have look at the back of it. If you purchased from us before 2017 you will have what is known as a legacy plug. these will become obsolete and unusable from this date.
Hi pluggers, I said that you wouldn’t hear from us until we had a shipping date but I understand it has been some time since my last post, so I wanted to assure you that we are very much still here and we are just as excited as you are for them to start shipping.
Our manufacturing partner TT Electronics have assured us we should get a production slot in the next 2 weeks – this has happened to us before so I don’t like to give this kind of information out as things change their side, very quickly. I asked them (begged them) to send a letter to assure you that they have full control and would shoulder some responsibility but alas, they have said they are not prepared to take any responsibility for a global pandemic, so it falls back on us to take the hits, of which we get hundreds every month.
In the meantime, if you have any existing plugs you can get early access to our latest updated iOS app.
Just download it here for iOS or here for Android
You will hear from me the second we hear from TT that they have started mass production
Leon Doyle – CEO
Hi folks, just to let you know, we are still here, we just had nothing to report over the last 2 months as we waited for the earth pin iteration to take place. now for some more news.
The Earth pin mould and tooling has been completed led by TT Electronics (our manufacturing partner)
We are now waiting for a production date to be set, which will be the next time you hear from us.
It’s getting closer but still no cigar!
Thanks again for sticking with us this long – It has been a very painful experience for the team here and TT Electronics as we uncovered a minefield of issues which we had certainly not anticipated after nearly 9 years of making smart plugs!
Leon Doyle – CEO
Happy New Year!
As promised, we are back at it, full throttle. Over the xmas period we announced there was an issue with production and I’d like to share that issue with you now – the earth pin that resides inside the plug, to receive the appliance going into it, was ordered incorrectly. To pass British testing, the earth pin needs to have a double kink to contact the earth before the neutral and live make contact and to hold the receiving plug with enough force for it to not just fall out and offer enough resistance that it can be removed safely.
(Diagram below for avid fans!)
The earth pins our production line, received only had one kink on them at the bottom. Such a small detail but the difference between the plug being certified to British Standards or it being certified to someone else’s standards. This meant we had to stop mass production.
It’s probably worth pointing out at this stage there is only ONE other smart plug in the UK market with the full British Standard testing around it and that’s the Phillips Hue smart plug. ALL the others have much less stringent tests on them and some, sadly, have none at all.
TT Electronics (our manufacturing partner) spotted the issue thankfully and have placed a new order for double crimped copper earth pins – this is now the only part missing from our 72 piece – bill of material list.
It is hoped this part arrives with the factory in the next 4 weeks, ideally before Chinese New Year (Feb 15th) as the part is from China. Then mass production can take place with a lead time of 4 weeks. Each plug takes 1 minute to calibrate the energy meter and about 1 minute to assemble so we hope to get the units off the line by the end of Feb and into all of your hands by the end of March.
Another painful wait but at this point we really cannot see another hold up. so again, for the third time, thanks for waiting and supporting a British designed and British startup, it means everything to us.
Regards
Leon Doyle – CEO
The upper kink (1.) ensures the earth makes contact before the Live/neutral. The lower kink (2.) has a stronger contact force ensuring a robust connection over the product lifetime.
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Hello,
Q. What is happening?
A. We are ending support for all WIFIPLUG LEGACY devices and all WIFIPLUG Servers on June 30, 2021.
Q. What does end of support / end of life for WIFIPLUG LEGACY devices mean?
A: As described in our terms and conditions, end of support for WIFIPLUG LEGACY happens in two stages. Starting June 30, 2021, the WIFIPLUG Servers will no longer apply any security patches and other updates to the devices functions, and all legacy devices (see below) will no longer be eligible for free technical support (end of support). In addition, you will no longer be able to create new functions using the WIFIPLUG app (These include setting scenes, timers or creating groups, renaming) Starting July 30, 2021, you will no longer be able to update existing functions using the WIFIPLUG app, this includes onboarding or use of any oAuth applications, including Alexa and IFTTT (end of life).
End of support does not impact function execution. Your functions will continue to run. However, they will be running on an unsupported runtime which is no longer maintained or patched by the WIFIPLUG team – any errors, faults or support issued will not be the responsibility of WIFIPLUG.
Server decommissioned, complete end of life Jan 4 2022 – at this stage all of your WIFIPLUG devices will no longer function and will be disconnected from the WIFIPLUG cloud permanently.
Q. Why are you writing a blog and not contacting me?
A. We are writing a blog as many of our early users / legacy users created usernames that did not require an email addresses. This is a public domain and can be viewed by all customers at any time.
Q. How do I know if I have any LEGACY devices?
A. The following list of devices will help:
“`
WIFIPLUG v.1 (launch 2012 / discontinued 2013) Server decommissioned, complete end of life Jan 4 2022
WIFIPLUG v.2 (launch 2013 / discontinued 2014) Server decommissioned, complete end of life Jan 4 2022
WIFIPLUG MINI (launch 2014 / discontinued 2016) Server decommissioned, complete end of life Jan 4 2022
WIFIPLUG POWER (launch 2014 / discontinued 2016) Server decommissioned, complete end of life Jan 4 2022
“`
Q. I have WIFIPLUG HOME is that affected?
A. WIFIPLUG HOME v.1 (launch date 2018) devices are uniquely protected by Apples MFI (Made For iPhone) HomeKit chipset. This means your plugs will function on the HomeKit app until Apple decide to close their smart home operations.
Q. What do I need to do?
A. You should consider upgrading your devices (some are nearly 10 years old) By moving to a WIFIPLUG HOME 1 or 2 version you will continue to benefit from important security, performance, and functionality enhancements offered by more recent releases.
Q. What if I need additional help?
A. Please contact us through our tech support page should you have any questions or concerns.
This is a site wide message – to all our pre order customers.
Please accept our apologies as we announce we will not be shipping before Christmas. We found out this week that TT Electronics our trusted manufacturing partner had an issue with the production line. We worked hard all week to come up with solutions with them and have been working literally through the night to find a fix. Sadly we are now out of options as TT Electronics and WIFIPLUG closes over the Christmas and New Year period.
We will be back at it full throttle on Jan 5th and we will endeavour, with TT, to fix this issue in the first week back in the New Year.
We understand how frustrating this announcement will be to the thousands of you who have trusted us to deliver your products, believe us, and we are just as frustrated.
I hope to be sending more good news at the very start of the year.
In the meantime, have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Hi folks.
Leon, the CEO of WIFIPLUG here.
I thought I’d be the first to let you know that we have finally heard back from our certification testers at Apple and the Wi-Fi Alliance. We have just been issued with Wi-Fi certification for WIFIPLUG HOME 2.0! You can see here that it was only issued this week and thankfully, this means that we can finally start mass production.
There are no more software, hardware or generally technical hurdles to overcome.
Mass production is now in the extremely capable hands of our manufacturing partners, TT Electronics.
Of course, we have gotten to the mass production stage later than we had originally hoped and anticipated however, our manufacturing partners, TT Electronics, have assured us that WIFIPLUG HOME 2.0 will begin shipping no later than the first week in December – just in time to say “Hey Siri, turn the Christmas Lights On”.
I understand that this is later than any of us had hoped for, and we thank you greatly for your continued patience and amazing support, the good news is, the light is now very much at the end of the tunnel.
I’d also like to give a shoutout to Owen on Apple’s MFi team who, despite the odds, really has gone above and beyond to see to it that our product launches without any further delays.
It’s been a difficult year for us all and together we moved forward.
Best Wishes
Leon
Read full article here
We are really pleased to be working with TT Electronics on our latest launch of the WIFIPLUG HOME 2.0 smart plug and all future releases. TT have watched us grow over the last 7 years and have now become our hardware manufacturing partner. They handle all aspects of hardware leaving us to focus on; cloud, apps and firmware (Software).
It’s a great partnership and we couldn’t be happier!
Hi folks, Leon Doyle here (CEO of WIFIPLUG),
Well what a turbulent few months that was – I’m sure none of you want to hear about the tough times we have been through, so let me get straight to it, the good news!
Our Apple MFi Authorized Test Lab opens its testing facilities again in the UK on June 29th (after closing its doors on March 26th) and our plugs will resume testing. We have built a great relationship with them over the last 5 years and will hopefully be able to avoid the standard 6-8 weeks testing time. I am hopeful they test and sign us off in a matter of weeks – however I don’t want to count my chickens yet and I should add, this is precisely why we never give an exact shipping date. It’s the unknown unknowns that we have no control over – just like lockdown!
After this, we can finally get the plugs out of mass production and into your hands. I’ve been lucky enough to have been using a few of them in my home during lockdown and I can tell you, these are the best ones yet, I’m really proud of our team and our UK manufacturing partner TT Electronics for working through the pandemic and trying our best to keep everything on track.
Over to the plug – The on/off relay sounds a lot quieter and smoother, the response times are a lot quicker (thanks to revised circuitry) and now the plugs are running the latest SDK released by Apple this year, With it’s patented smart meter and higher max rating, I can now put them on my tumble drier and washing machine to visualise the cost of each cycle. Our latest V.2 plug will be used for both B2C & enterprise customers like; Proctor & Gamble, Electrolux and BSH through our sister company, myma.io (where we diagnose faults before they happen!).
Here is a picture of the the new and old side by side. It’s crazy to think how these tiny changes have cost over £100,000!! In fact, It’s best I don’t think about it too much or I won’t be able to sleep!
I would like to thank you again, to all customers new and old, for sticking by us (a British startup, giving it everything we have got).
Thanks for supporting our British startup, we are now 7 years old and are looking forward to the next 7 with you by our side, I should add, being completely transparent and vulnerable here, my biggest fear is that this isn’t good news for some and that a potential sudden increase in refunds would spell a very unhappy start for WIFIPLUG HOME 2.0!
Please do let us know (via a support ticket) if your delivery address has changed as I know it has been a long wait.
Kind Regards
Leon Doyle