SwitchBotSmart Switch Button Pusher - Bluetooth Fingerbot for Rocker Switch/One-Way Button, Automatic Light Switch, Timer and APP Control, Works with Alexa When Paired with SwitchBot Hub (Black)

The media could not be loaded. This is my second time purchasing this same product. I bought the first one about two years ago to use on my garage button, since the clicker stopped working and is apparently impossible to fix. This turns out to be a much better solution, because if you also purchase the Hub Mini, you can activate it from anywhere (comes in handy if I’m not home but need to open my garage for someone). Also works well with Siri, as I’ve programmed shortcuts for “open/close my garage”, and assigned it to the Action Button on my iPhone, essentially making it the clicker.The downside is that these are made of cheap material and wear down relatively quickly, depending on your expectations. I had hoped my original purchase would’ve lasted at least another year or two, but instead its lifespan was July 2022 to January 2025. That’s not bad….but still.Regardless, I got two and a half years out of the original. In that time, it only went through one and a half batteries (I had to replace the battery once, and the replacement was still at least halfway charged).And in that time, it worked great. Once in a while it wouldn’t respond to Siri or even pressing the shortcut manually, but in all of those cases I could simply open the Switchbot app and activate it from there. There’s also a good chance in most of those instances, it wasn’t a problem with the product, but with my WiFi or something.So, if you don’t mind spending the $25-$30 to replace it every 2-3 years, it’s great. Personally I think the cost is worth it.

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Ok, let's start with the first thing. These are cute little button pushers. There is something satisfying about the little "finger" popping out and pushing a button. That's about it. If you want to use this with any other smart home system, Google Home, SmartThings, etc., you'll need one of their hubs. Depending on how many "bots" you are using and how far apart they are, you may need multiple hubs. I purchased two of the switchbots and immediately was hit with, download the app, control them with Bluetooth. That's not what I wanted to do, as I have a fairly large investment in SmartThings. So, I sucked it up and ordered the hub. (just the plain square one, not the pretty cloud hub). Both hubs do the same thing, I needed function, not cutsie. I got the hub and tried to bring my two "bots" into my SmartThings universe. This was more painful than it should be. I would add one and then the next and the first would go offline. I don't know how many times it took me to get them both loaded and online at the same time, but it was quite a few. The SmartThings integration said beta or something, but I was able to get them integrated pretty easily. I setup a scene in SmartThings to control them. This is where things could be better. The scene runs just fine, but sometimes the "bots" are asleep or playing video games or who knows what. I get about a 95% of the time working, but there is no acknowledgement message that is sent back so SmartThings just tosses the ball to the "bot" and hopes everything works ok. The biggest issue is just that, if it doesn't work, you have to "sync" the bot back to the app manually. So, if it doesn't turn on the device, and SmartThings thinks it is on, then you have to turn the device on manually or the next command will do the opposite function. I have a pretty good success rate on the first action, it does ok turning the devices on, it's the off that I get about a 95% on one bot and 50% success rate on the other. This is ok for what it's doing, but if it was some mission critical device I was trying to control, 50% success is pretty low. Would I buy them again? Maybe. They do mostly work, but keep in mind that you'll need a hub to control these "bots" with anything other than your phone, and within Bluetooth range to do that. Since there is no positive or negative feed back (ACK/NAK) to your smart home, it's about as reliable as telling an 8 year old to wash the dishes. Now for more on the hub, I got the smaller square hub, but it has a really annoying bright white light that stays on all the time, I have this in my bedroom so I have to put something on top of the box to cover the light. You can still see the box "glowing" so I can tell it's on. Not the best thing I've added to my smart home, but it tries and sometimes works. I just wish there was someway to get an acknowledgement to my SmartThings universe, so I could reliably tell the status. I get that it's a digital world trying to interface with the analog world, but it could be just a bit better.