Nous A1Z is a Zigbee plug that allows you to control any electrical device plugged in from your phone such as a lamp, a fan, a TV and much more and know its energy consumption.
Why is the Nous-A1Z-1 Zigbee plug so popular?
The Nous A1Z smart plug is a success in the smart home market as it uses the famous Zigbee technology, is compact and in addition to activating or deactivating an electrical load, it also measures the consumption and all this at a reduced price.
But that’s not all, unlike many Zigbee smart plugs on the market that can handle electrical loads of up to 10A, the Nous Zigbee plug can handle loads of up to 16A, albeit in a timely manner and 10A continuously.
And with its consumption measurement, you can know how much your plugged-in electrical device consumes in real time from your phone and see a history over time.
A tip you should know is that you can also use the Nous A1Z plug to track your PV production.
Advantages and disadvantages of the Nous zigbee plug
Advantages
- Measures consumption: This is a very interesting feature as you can track the consumption of any device in your home: fridge, TV, freezer and more.
- Size: It is a very compact plug unlike many smart plugs on the market so it will not get in the way.
- Compatibility: It works with the most popular home automation systems such as a Tuya Smart Life hub (Lidl, Nous, Moes etc), Alexa, Jeedom and Home Assistant.
- Zigbee router: Using Zigbee technology, this smart plug repeats the Zigbee communications signal.
- Recovers its state: You can configure your plug to automatically recover its pre-outage state when the power comes back on.
- Price: It is a Zigbee plug at a very attractive price, which logically makes it the No. 1 in sales.
Disadvantages
- Needs a Zigbee hub: The Nous A1Z smart plug communicates on Zigbee so you need a compatible Zigbee hub to use it from your phone.
- No LED colour indicator: It would be interesting to have a different colour depending on the consumption on your light ring to know if there is a low or high consumption without looking at your phone.
- It doesn’t support high loads: Although it accepts loads up to 16A, it has to be punctual since the plug will be automatically deactivated.
Nous A1Z Zigbee Plug Tutorial
The Nous smart plug is a success in the smart home market and today we are going to discover this device in detail.
For starters, this Nous A1Z plug works with Zigbee wireless technology, being very popular nowadays and is compatible with different hubs such as Tuya Smart Life, Jeedom, and Home Assistant among the most prominent ones.
From the interface of your home automation hub, you will be able to remotely control your smart plug and therefore have control of a plugged-in electrical device.
We also have a physical button that allows us to activate or deactivate the plugged-in electrical device without having to use our phone or unplug this smart plug.
As you can see, it is a compact smart plug so you will have no difficulty plugging it in anywhere in your home without taking up space, which is another nice touch.
But that’s not all, a great advantage of the Nous A1Z Zigbee plug is that it measures the power consumption of the plugged-in device.
In other words, you will be able to identify the consumption of your electrical device and you will also be able to monitor this consumption over time.
Let’s find out more about this Nous A1Z smart plug by linking it with a compatible home automation hub.
To start with, we are going to use it with Zigbee2MQTT which you can take advantage of in both Home Assistant and Jeedom.
What we have to do from the Zigbee2MQTT interface is to activate the inclusion mode.
At this point, we can plug in our Nous A1Z plug and it automatically goes into inclusion mode and we can see it with its flashing LED indicator.
Ready, after a few seconds, we have our Nous A1Z Zigbee socket linked so now, we have control of this socket from anywhere in the world on our hub interface.
It can be set to ON or OFF.
We can set a status of the socket after the power failure.
For example, we can configure our Nous A1Z socket to automatically return to its pre-outage state when the power is restored.
This can be important in some cases, for example if there is a power failure and you have this socket behind a refrigerator, if the power comes back on …. then you can have a setting for the socket to automatically return to its last state, and this could be the ON state for this case.
This is a very interesting detail given that there are some smart devices that do NOT integrate this function.
For example, if you have smart bulbs WITHOUT this function and there is a temporary power cut during your holiday, you may be surprised to see all your lights on when you return.
Or the other way around, you have an activated device and the power goes out temporarily, when the power comes back on, it remains deactivated, which can be problematic for you.
So having smart devices with the function to memorise their last status is very interesting.
Then, we have a choice of LED indicator.
If you are bothered by the LED indicator on the device, for example, if you have it in your bedroom and don’t want to be disturbed at night, you can turn it off so that it never lights up.
Another option is to activate the LED when the socket is off and deactivate the LED when the socket is on or the other way round.
And the last option this time is to always have the LED on regardless of the status of the socket.
Then there is the consumption measurement function.
You should know that this Nous A1Z plug can manage loads of up to 10A and 16A but in a punctual way.
I recommend using this Nous A1Z plug for low power loads such as a lamp or a multimedia device but not for high loads in order to preserve this plug over time and not damage it.
In my example, I am going to try a fan that also serves as a heater to be able to measure the variation of the measurement according to the modes I set.
- If I use the fan, I have a consumption of 18W.
- If I use heating mode 1 in this case I have a consumption of more than 800W.
- If I use mode 2 I have a consumption of more than 1300W.
- And mode 3 has a power consumption of more than 2000W.
Consumption measurement is accurate and changes in real time.
Over time, we will be able to see the overall consumption and have a history of this consumption over time.
One detail that is missing in this Nous A1Z device is that the light ring might look like a ring that changes colour according to consumption which would have been interesting to know if there is a low or high consumption without looking at your phone but this is not the case, this ring has no use whatsoever.
Then there is the Child Lock function, which is a child protection function, i.e. by activating this function, no one can deactivate the plug from its physical button.
Although you should know that you can deactivate this function by pressing the physical button 4 times in a row, which must be a security measure, in order to continue to have control of the device even if we have a communications failure with our home automation hub.
And the Link Quality indicates the quality of communications with this Nous A1Z Zigbee plug.
If we go to “Specific settings”, we can calibrate different measurements of either the power, current or voltage of the socket if we see that there is a small difference with the real measurement.
This is what we have from Jeedom and Home Assistant, but if you want a simpler solution for your home, being a plug compatible with both Zigbee2MQTT and Tuya SmartLife as you can see in the packaging, let’s try it with a Tuya hub such as the same brand NOUS which has an interesting format being a hub that connects directly to a socket in your home without additional cables.
Of course, you can use any Tuya hub, such as one from MOES or Lidl.
The process is similar, if we use our Nous A1Z plug for the first time, we must launch the inclusion mode in our home automation hub and plug in our plug which will automatically link with this hub.
That’s it, we have control of the Nous A1Z plug from our phone.
We can manage a schedule for activating and deactivating the socket.
We can also activate a timer to turn it off after X minutes.
And of course, we can also follow the energy consumption in real time, which varies according to the use of your plugged-in electrical device.
In my example, I use the same fan with heating.
I also do my tests with a dryer to identify their consumption.
A final example is to connect it behind a refrigerator to know what its consumption is during a defined period.
And it is worth noting that in addition to being able to use it to measure energy consumption, we could also use this plug to know our energy production if we have solar panels.
And just like Jeedom and Home Assistant, we have access to the plug’s parameters such as the status of the plug after a power failure, the status of the LED indicator, the locking of the child button and much more.
If you are not interested in using a Zigbee plug because you need the additional purchase of a Zigbee home automation hub, you can buy this NOUS plug in a WIFI version that you can connect directly to your home internet router and the Smart Life app on your phone.
But Zigbee, as you have seen in other content, is a powerful technology if you have multiple devices in your home.
This is the case of a user who manages the electric gate from his phone, has the pool filtration automated and a smart heating with thermostatic heads, all with Zigbee technology and in order not to have communication failures since he has a big house with thick walls and knowing that Zigbee technology has a limited direct range, 10 to 15 metres on average indoors, he needed some Zigbee devices connected to the power that act as signal repeaters.
So he bought these NOUS Zigbee sockets so that they can repeat Zigbee communications.
Because a Zigbee device connected to the mains automatically repeats the signal, which is another interesting detail of this NOUS Zigbee plug.
Of course, the magic of a smart home is to be able to create routines to automate tasks such as turning the plug on or off according to defined criteria.
A use case could be to automatically switch off the TV and other multimedia devices that are on standby at 0h every night and switch them back on at 6h in the morning or any other time according to your criteria, in order to make small savings on devices that are switched off but continue to consume while on standby.
In the case of another user who has a Zigbee smart home, he also uses this NOUS Zigbee socket to recharge his son’s electric scooter automatically during off-peak hours.
And of course, we can have voice control of our NOUS Zigbee plug from Amazon Alexa voice assistants either directly by linking this plug to a voice assistant model with integrated Zigbee hub or via a Tuya, Home Assistant or Jeedom Zigbee hub connected to Alexa.
Of course, the big key to the success of this Zigbee plug is also its price which you can find between 15 to 20 euros and knowing that there is a pack of 2 plugs or a pack of 4 NOUS plugs being even cheaper per unit, which is interesting if you want to buy several of these devices.
Given its price and all its functions, this Zigbee plug is, logically, a great success.
Technical characteristics of the Zigbee Smart Plug
- Compatibility: You need a Zigbee hub (Jeedom, Home Assistant, Echo 4 or Tuya Smart Life).
- Brand: Nous
- Colour: White
- Material: PC/ABS (V0)
- Special functions: energy monitoring
- Certification: CE, RoHS
- Max. electrical power: 3,680 W
- Signal repeater: YES
- Device dimensions: 46 x 46 x 72 mm
- Maximum load: up to 16A (peak current) – 10A continuous
- Operating temperature: 0°C – 40°C
- Operating voltage range: 110-230 V 50/60 Hz
- Moisture protection level: IP20
- Compatibility with voice assistants Amazon Alexa, Google Home
- System requirements: iOS 8 or Android 4.4 or later version
- Wi-Fi communication standard IEEE 802.15.4/WiFi, 802.11bgn
Purchased together with Nous A1Z
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