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Colombia, Bogotรก
1 Level
717 Review
40 Karma

Review on ๐ŸŒก๏ธ Ubibot WS1 WiFi Temperature Humidity Sensor and Smart Monitor with External Probe Support, Alerts & History, Free IoT App/Web Console, IFTTT, Alexa, (2.4GHz WiFi โ€“ No Hub Required) by Jeff Swanson

Revainrating 1 out of 5

Warning to all interested parties.

I have over 30 years experience with computers and software. I also have some experience building Arduino devices that can provide temperature and humidity readings. I was optimistic about purchasing this device, but soon discovered several major problems. 1) The first red flag was when the text arrived shortly after registration. I opened the text message and it turned out to be a series of multi-point statements that was more than a small window in the app. Each message was tagged with a tag number and as they were read to the right margin I couldn't read the entire message as the text ended with a . Three dot suffix, so I clicked in the right margin to read the entire line of text and couldn't expand the text. The programmer couldn't enable newline and 4 or 6 instructions sent to me by support couldn't be read. Are you having trouble inserting a line break so I can read your statement? For real? This was the first of a series of red flags that continued to appear. 2) The second problem appeared when I started monitoring the battery voltage. It took about 5-8 hours for the battery voltage to get so low that I concluded that two "AA" batteries would never work and that I would have to use some other form of power for the device. Please note that the specs state that the device can run on 4 AA batteries for four months (that's a blatant lie). This is the second alert that something is wrong with this product. 3) I observed a fairly rapid drop in battery voltage and reduced the number of data requests for time parameters to every 10 minutes. and moisture. I even disabled all other sensors to save as much battery as possible. The tension quickly dropped to an even lower level. 4) I decided to plug in my phone charger and give it enough power. The instructions say you can connect it to a micro USB cable and then to a computer. So I've mainly used phone battery charging as a more convenient way to give the device what it needs. The voltage was even lower as if it couldn't handle the phone battery connected to the device. Unable to read any of the recommendations sent in the wordless document, I decided to remove the "AA" batteries to force them to draw power from the micro USB port that my phone's battery plugs into was connected. I watched the voltage rise to 5 volts and I don't know if it was too high and there was no information to suggest it was a problem. It registered 5 volts with no "too high voltage" warnings so I figured it must be OK (poor programming to not indicate if the voltage is too high or too low). Now the problem was that the data couldn't draw the graph. If it's not one, it's another. I don't want to go in circles with one problem after another if they haven't already got this device working. I'm not a beta tester, and when am I going to spend $80 on a device that claims to be professional grade? I expect it to be reliable and not give me problem after problem. 5) I contacted support and they sent me an email asking for the serial number of the device. So we ended up with endless letters in which they don't understand anything and only answer one of my ten questions. What they do is keep you going back and forth long enough for the return period to pass. I've dealt with this before, and the best way to deal with it is to limit the time and number of exchanges you will have with them. 6) I don't trust any of the 5 star reviews. They build these devices for $5 each, and if they give away 100 of them for free and you have to give them a 5-star rating, the recipient of such an offer will write a review within the first 1 hour of use, without attribution to the device notice will begin to fail within 8 hours and/or performance will be less than specified.

Pros
  • Quality construction
Cons
  • Requires outlet