PumpSpy WiFi Sump Pump Smart Outlet with Sump Pump Water Level Sensor, 24/7Monitoring & Alerts, Works with any 120V Sump Pump, Has Additional Outlet for Backup System For Sump Pump, White

I walked into this purchase with a full expectation that it could be a total miss. Connecting the unit and securing it was super straight forward. I see not issues with that part if you have the space for this device. As a network engineer getting it connected to Wifi was more complicated, not because it wasnt simple enough, but because the Android App just kept spinning during Wifi Setup. My solution was to grab my wifes iPhone and do the setup from the Apple app. This was a much smoother experience so Android users take note. I have no experience with the iPhone app after that point and I dont think my wife looks at it at all. The Android app however is a bit hit or miss. It worked fine for a few months and then one day it just stopped working after a notification that it lost wifi connection. Opening up the app each time caused it to crash over and over and over. The only thing that fixed it was to clear the cache and data on the app and then login to it. Doing this does not delete the historical data which is nice. In the end free lifetime app support is a trade off for some frustrating elements.

This thing is a total piece of junk. Bought 2 of them, the original and the 2.0 and they are exactly the same. Both say 2.0 on them so clearly there is no difference, they just wanted to rebrand to clear the negative reviews. Major issues connecting these to wifi. Tons of errors, took over an hour before I figured out to set the IP address manually to get them to join. The setup steps provided straight up don’t work. The app is also a piece of junk. It doesn’t work most of the time and often just sits there spinning and never loads. Frequently have to kill it and restart it 2 or 3 times to even get it to load. Functionality also doesn’t work. I can unplug the device for hours at a time and I won’t receive a power loss alert and it will still show ‘Power On’ in the app. Unfortunately there aren’t many competitors or alternatives. Moen makes a product so maybe look at that. Disappointed beyond belief in this product.

07/08/2022 - I am revising my rating as the history feature has been returned to the app. 06/13/2022 - Today I am lowering my rating from 5 stars to 3 stars after confirming with their tech support that the history data feature has been removed from the app. I can no longer recommend this product. I have been using this monitor for 2 years and was very happy with its performance. I have Apple iPhone and had no problems setting it up or connecting to my WiFi (two floors above). I have recommended it to others. I have received power outage alerts and during/after a rain storm I check to see that the pump has been running. I know that when working, my pump runs for 17 seconds and in a extreme downpour can run once every 1-2 minutes. Why is this important? Knowing your pumps characteristic nature and knowing your rainfall you can monitor the run data and detect a failing pump. One example is a worn impeller or cracked case will result in longer run times but not continuous running. PumpSpy has decided to delete the historical data feature that allowed me to periodically review past cycles and verify that the pump is operating normally. Someone else said they stored 90 days of history on their servers (data is not stored on your Outlet or your app/smartphone). I called Tech Support and they called back and confirmed the deletion of this feature and gave their reason. IMHO its a cost issue, as we dont pay for monitoring service, but somebody has to pay a server provider to host their service and store user data. I suspect as more people bought the product, their cost (which include data storage) increased and paying these costs was being paid from future sales. Sustaining this model can be problematic. Having this history feature is a key feature and PumpSpy probably needs to consider offering yearly cost for users who want historical data. Just a theory. One the positive side, if PumpSpy sees the error of their ways, it would be easy to reinstate the history feature.

Update March 2019 - It has not started sending those alerts as I complained in the review below. Overall,I am satisfied with the performance of this device. I believe there is a lot of room to make improvements such as allow customers to setup custom notifications depending upon cycle length, # of cycles, time of day etc.. But overall I am satisfied and will rate it at 4 starts... for This unit doesnt alter for any sump pump malfunctions as it claims. It only monitors if sump pump is consuming electricity or not and just monitoring for how long or often it runs for. It doesnt even do the basic check of if pump normally runs for 30 seconds and t it gets stuck is one time it gets stuck and keep running for 15 minutes, it never picks up that. It has happened to me multiple times now, it never sends any alerts at all. To me its the most basic alert that it needs to send right away... Its waste of $150 for nothing....

Setup using the app is cumbersome (using Samsung Galaxy S21+), manual setup is probably the way to go. I never did get the app setup to completely work (got me about 90% there, still had to add the device in the app via the serial number), while the manual setup worked much more reliably in my testing. Instructions for both methods are included in the packaging. Some interesting network notes for those who may have more restrictive firewalls/network setups: 1. Outlet requires 2.4Ghz band for wireless communication, will not see 5Ghz networks. 2. Outlet seems to be hard-coded to use 8.8.8.8 as its primary DNS, and will not use DNS servers offered via DHCP. Thus will require UDP/53 outbound. 3. Outlet seems to communicate status information to the PumpSpy servers via TCP/8081. Thus will require TCP/8081 outbound. Text/Email/Push notifications seem to work fairly reliably. No immediate issues noted, and pump status information (water level and cycle info) seems to be communicated to the PumpSpy servers quickly. Time will tell...

I bought one of these when I moved into my new home almost two years ago after having a very constantly active sump pump at my old house. Went to install it and discovered my sump pit was bone dry. According to my neighbors, we never get water in our pit because our neighborhood is essentially situated on a 700 foot sand hill. I ended up leaving my PumpSpy installed and on despite the fact my pump never runs. Lately it’s been saying my sump pump has been running anyways, and I can prove that’s not true because I also have a Wyze cam installed in my pit which never shows it running, and there’s still dust on the bottom of the pump from the last time I opened the pit two years ago. Yet the PumpSpy is saying it’s running. If it thinks my dormant pump is running, I wouldn’t trust it to give me accurate data if my sump was active. Piece of junk. Only thing I use it for now is to send me text messages when my WiFi goes down.

All wifi connected devices have occasional connectivity issues. It just goes with the territory. My house doesn’t need a sump pump, but I have recommended the PumpSpy to three friends over the past few years who all love them. One friend contacted me recently saying his unit had disconnected from wifi and he couldn’t get it to reconnect. I tried to get him set back up but was also unsuccessful. I was starting to second guess my decision to recommend he get one, but had him contact PumpSpy hoping they would help. To my surprised they were easy to contact, called him within a day and had him re-connected quickly. I will continue to recommend PumpSpy and will be installing one in the new house I’m building.

Update: 6-15-22: I spoke with someone from PumpSpy, and they are going to add the features back and explore how to better address this going forward. The developer of this product has actively removed a key feature: cycle history. Previously you could see 90 days worth of information on how often the sump pump ran. Now it only tells you the number for the current day. They have not provided any announcement or reasoning or otherwise indicated why they removed this key feature. If they are willing to remove that feature, it’s only a matter of time before future “improvements” further nerf this product and its usefulness.

Overall works well. My wishlist: - Can’t seem to change the time zone to Central. Am I overlooking a setting? - It takes too long for the monitoring service to recognize a lost connection due to power failure. It should be pinging the module on five minute interval or less. - Monitoring service should be smart enough to notice anomalies in behavior, such as running much more often than usual based on past history. Or give the user the ability to set alert triggers based on certain behavior. - Should recognize short cycling or long periods of continual use

Serves its purpose once you get it set up... but establishing the wifi connection was totally frustrating. The automatic set up on my Android phone didnt work despite multiple attempts. I finally had to use the manual set up but the instructions were incomplete. Among other things, it requires entering the devices serial number, but fails to indicate where to find it. I finally found it on the side of the unit, but it would have been much easier if it was indicated in the instructions. After getting the unit connected, the app provided no information on the pump status. I finally tried shutting down the app and restarting it. It then started to work, but theres nothing in the instructions about trying a restart. Overall, it took me over two hours of screwing around to get it working... when it should have been a 15 minute job.