Kasa smart outlets
https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/faq/946/
Hydra-MTS was designed to be a massively expandable aquarium monitoring system that uses off the shelf components to keep costs down. When you have a lot of tanks the costs can really add up.
We use Kasa smart plugs. These off the shelf smart plugs are controlled over your homes wifi network. They have an app for your smart phone. The manufacturer's instructions are in the youtube video on the right. Set up for these devices is quite straightforward and once you have done one, the rest are very fast.
The following advice is given to enhance the Hydra-MTS / Kasa experience
1) Create a room for the plugs you are going to use for your aquarium, name it Hydra-MTS or anything you like, the name does not matter. Put all the plugs for your aquarium in this room. This allows you to use the Kasa app to control other things in your home and helps prevent someone else from turning off some critical piece of your aquarium setup.
2) Both the Kasa app and the Hydra-MTS application can control these plugs. We suggest you only use Hydra-MTS to control the aquarium outlets. Hydra-MTS will override any changes you make with the Kasa app.
3) If you use the Kasa app to override the Hydra-MTS settings an alarm will be triggered.
4) Use the Hydra-MTS application to manually turn on or off an outlet, put it in auto when you are not overriding.
5) Normally on/off setting. This default setting allows you to set your heaters and pumps to be normally on and your lights to normally off.
6) Naming the outlets is done in the Kasa app, it automatically shows up in the Hydra-MTS application. When you get alot of these it can get a bit confusing. We suggest putting a number relating to the strip number and another relating the the plug number, before the name. For your first 6 outlet strip using the 3rd outlet you would have 13 Angels living room, or for your second single 20 Tetra office. This kind of naming system groups the plugs and may make it easier to determine which plug is connected to what. When in doubt use the Kasa on, off function to find your outlet.
7) Do not use any of the advanced functions like scheduling or timer with plugs that are connected to the Hydra-MTS system. Although quite cool, these will conflict with the Hydra-MTS operation and cause an error. Feel free to use them in other applications.
Kasa smart outlets are available in single outlet, 3 and 6 outlet plug strip versions. Some of them have energy monitoring (EM) so be sure to check the description.
The units that have been tested as of 2/23 are:
HS300(US) - EM - 6 outlet plug strip
KP303(US) - No EM - 3 outlet plug strip
EP10(US) - No EM - single outlet
KP125(US) - EM - single outlet
EP25P4 (US) - EM single outlet 4 pack, included in starter kit
Setting up your plugs in Hydra-MTS
IPhone - Bypassing Home Kit Setup
If you buy a home kit version and use an Iphone, the system will attempt to force you to use the home kit setup. If you dont want to do that there is a work around posted here
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/comments/qgl948/cant_setupinstalladd_homekit_tplinkkasa_smart/
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