meross MSS425F Smart Power Strip Review, Home Assistant, Local Control

In this video we're going to take a look at the meross MSS425F Smart Power Strip, a HomeKit enabled device which we should be able to control locally through Home Assistant

Unlike other countries, finding a 4 socket smart power strip in the UK has been difficult to do

So not surprisingly there are other country specific ones like this

meross MSS425F 4 socket Smart Power Strip
US https://amzn.to/3HZW9i6
UK https://amzn.to/44R75bG

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Overview:
This power strip uses Wi-Fi, which I'd prefer not to use, but local control takes precedence for me

It has 4 AC sockets that can be independently controlled, each with their own LED for power status

And it has 4 USB type A sockets which can only be controlled as an entire group but there is a power status LED for that

There is only one manual button which turns the entire power strip on or off

So other than remote control, to turn off an individual device you'd have to unplug it

Another thing to bear in mind is that the manual does warn you to connect this to a 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi and to turn off the 5Ghz radio

The manual mentions only turning 5Ghz off for a while though, suggesting this only affects the initial installation

You get two manuals with this device; a user guide and HomeKit setup guide, plus a disclaimer

Interestingly the Amazon UK site has links to PDFs for these, plus a troubleshooting guide

Add Device To HomeKit:
Home Assistant has a HomeKit Contoller integration

But to add a HomeKit device you have to first add it to HomeKit and then remove it

Home Assistant will then be able to pick it up as an unpaired device

If you have an iPhone for instance it's relatively easy to add this to the Home app as it involves using the QR code on the underside of the power strip

NOTE: Make sure your phone is in the correct Wi-Fi network to begin with and it will rejoin it afterwards

Once the power strip is added you'll then want to remove it

Bear in mind, you don't get a master power controller for this power strip in the Home app, but you do get controls for the AC sockets and USB group

The meross app on the other hand does allow you to turn the entire power strip on and off

Another thing to point out is that you can't make firmware updates through the Home app, as the manual warns

And these issues are going to be the same for Home Assistant

Add Device To Home Assistant:
Now I had problems adding this to Home Assistant as it couldn't detect it

I do have Home Assistant locked down using firewall rules on Proxmox VE and I noticed multicast DNS traffic from the power strip being blocked

So I added a rule to allow access to UDP port 5353 for traffic destined for the multicast group 224.0.0.251

Shortly after doing that, the power strip was detected

So it seems the HomeKit controller is listening out for this type of traffic

To add this into Home Assistant either follow the Notification path or navigate to Settings | Devices & Services

It should show up as a Discovered integration

Click Configure, and you'll be prompted for the pairing code which you'll find next to the QR code on the underside of the power strip

Even if you remove access to the Internet for the power strip and reboot it, I noticed that Home Assistant can still control it, although there might be an initial hiccup until connectivity is reestablished

But this is only my initial test of this device, so I'll have to see if it can survive without Internet access long term

Final thoughts:
Because the sockets can be grouped in Home Assistant I'm not really bothered about not having one central power button

But not being able to update the firmware is a concern

The manual suggests adding the power strip to the meross app afterwards but I found that when I did that, it stopped working in Home Assistant

I was then forced to remove the device from the app and Home Assistant, factory reset it and go through the installation process again

It's not ideal but at least this provides me with the smart power strip that has 4 independent sockets that I need

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