Ubiquiti Networks mFi mPower Wi-Fi Power Strip Review
by Ganesh T S on November 21, 2013 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Automation
- Wi-Fi
- Ubiquiti Networks
- IoT
Setup and Usage Impressions
The UFO Power Center caught our fancy because power consumption measurement is something we do for almost all products that we review. Using a Kill-a-Watt is not very accurate, while the Watts Up? meters are very costly for our particular purpose. The UFO Power Center is continuing to serve us well. However, with more devices being tested simultaneously, and lab space at a premium, we started looking for something more down to earth in terms of industrial design. The mPower Pro fit our needs perfectly, but Ubiquiti was having some supply issues when we were looking for a unit to test out. In the end, we landed up with the mPower 3-outlet version.
Hardware
The mPower unit comes with a wall mounting plate, screws, a CD with the mFi software and a quick start guide along with the main unit. From the outside, it looks every bit like a conventional power strip. In addition to the circuit breaker reset button on the side, it also has a factory reset button. A flashing LED on the front panel provides status information.
Setup Process
The setup process for the mPower is quite similar to that of the UFO Power Center. When powered up, the device creates an ad-hoc wireless network. Upon connecting a PC to the ad-hoc network, the unit's web UI is accessible. The browser interface allows for selecting and entering credentials for the Wi-Fi network to which the unit is supposed to connect. Our mPower unit was originally running firmware version 1.2.3 , but upgrading to 2.0.7 brought a lot of interesting features.
The firmware update could be processed only after linking up the mPower unit with a mFi controller instance. The mFi is a Java-based software which proved very difficult to install on my Windows 8 machine. It also got complicated a bit because I had mFi installed on multiple computers on the same network (not the usual scenario for most end-users). I eventually got it working on a Windows 7 setup. The default credentials for the unit are printed on the box (ubnt/ubnt). However, linking the unit to a mFi instance overrides these credentials with those used for the mFi.
Using the mPower
The controller software is a full-fledged automation suite with support for rules and other features. It will not be covered in detail because this review is about the mPower unit specifically. Suffice to say that all the parameters of the mPower unit (names and status of the outlets, power consumption recording etc.) can be viewed, recorded, used for rules and altered as applicable through the mFi interface.
The browser interface for the mPower in the firmware version 1.2.3 was minimal and only provided statistics related to the network connection and some logs related to it. In 2.0.7, the Controls tab was introduced and this provides a way for users to control outlet status and check up on the instantaneous values of the electrical parameters (as shown in the gallery above).
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dac7nco - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Oh; these UPS systems manage a fair job of power consumation; it's why they sell so well. 2,500+ 4/5/9U UPS had better be measuring it's own power! Most of these will tell you re: power-draw from their peripheral AC ports. Things like printers should be on non-UPS AC ports; I have a (small) 12U rack, with a 4U desktop, a 2U Co-processor for offline jobs, a 4U storage/NAS system and a 2U cyberpower 1,650-Watt UPS. This Cyberpower UPS will run these things for about 2-hours.ganeshts - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Can you link me to this exact Cyberpower model which can tell the power draw on the peripheral AC ports ?dac7nco - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/products/ups-syst...dac7nco - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
http://cdn4.tinkertry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/...Jaybus - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - link
These UPSs monitor individual outlets and can be controlled via Ethernet, serial, or USB, but afaik they cannot switch individual outlets. They power on or off all outlets simultaneously. To get individually switched outlets requires a switched PDU, which is substantially more cost. The mPower can work as a much cheaper PDU.processinfo - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
How much power it is using by itself?ganeshts - Sunday, November 24, 2013 - link
Around 1 W with things at idle, but the network interface up.CBRworm - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
I think devices like this are great, certainly an emerging market which I appreciate being reviewed. I have been using ubiquiti devices for many years and have found them to be mostly solid hardware with software that may be lacking.I would like to get my hands on a few of these to play with, currently I also use Kill-A-Watts to measure power consumption and the only power control devices are things I hacked together being driven through a parallel port. These devices would be great for me to turn off devices in other areas of the house - like the upstairs TV and/or Xbox at dinner/bed time. Christmas lights and other lights around the house would also be good. I love being able to turn the thermostats up and down from my phone - this would be a great extension of that.
As for the UPS's. The batteries for my UPS's are in line with the cost of the Pro device. While the UPS is useful for helping with some management features on computer hardware, 90% of the uses for this device would not be well suited by a UPS with management packages.
mhammett - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
A couple things...1) UBNT's history has not been the enterprise space, but in the service provider market. The bulk of their revenue still comes from service providers.
2) The mFi line is targeted towards building automation, not standard consumer home automation.
3) mFi is a whole line of products, not just this device. That said, they still don't have the devices that I am looking for.
4) I don't know if you can run the devices without the controller software, but why would you want to? The software is the best part of the whole thing. You have dozens of these devices and have scripts on the server that read the data that the system collects and can make decisions based upon them.
5) I was a beta tester for mFi, though I don't have a history with building automation systems. In my testing, it has been a good system. It will be a great system when they release the deices I asked for. ;-)
ganeshts - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Thanks for your thoughts. Can you let me know what devices you are looking for? I am pretty sure a mFi Thermostat would be well received.. Just wondering what else people want out there.Yes, you can run the devices without the controller software. For our usecase, we don't want the hassle of running a VM or server hosting the mFi controller -- just need the ability to turn on and off an outlet and do real-time power measurement on the outlets. Yes, if you need the rules, you should use the mFi controller -- but, if they are simple, they could be handled by scripts running on a PC or even on the mPower itself (in certain cases).