Wesley's Tool-Box

Selecting HomeKit devices that control the power, whether they be power plugs/outlets or light switches, is a bit tricky when you're living in a country with 220V mains power. This is because much of them are made to serve the U.S. market, which uses 120V. If they are designed for dual voltage it wouldn't be a big issue, but some devices don't list this capability. A Philips Hue light bulb has 110-130V printed on the U.S. version and 220-240V on the Korean version, but they all support 110 to 240V.

The list of devices that are specifically tailored towards the 220V market is growing, but still sparse. Thus, I sought and picked out the ones that were definitely 220V compatible. In the case of power plugs, products from Elgato, Koogeek, and Incipio fit the bill. Power plug solutions from iDevices are listed and confirmed as 120V only.

Despite the shapes, the smart power plugs shown above all have dual voltage support. Interestingly, the EU version of the Elgato Eve Energy is the smallest and won't block an adjacent outlet, while the US version of the device and the Koogeek P1 are larger and may block an outlet below or above. Incipio's CommandKit Wireless Smart Outlet with Metering is much larger and and longer than the competition, just like its full name. I should also note that only the Incipio devices had a problem with HomeKit pairing, where the process would succeed only on the second try, and leave a phantom entry in the device search screen that won't go away until the iPhone reboots.


Elgato's Eve Energy smart power plugs have the most regionally varied line-up, with US, EU, UK, and AU versions, all having 100-240V, 50/60Hz support. The energy monitoring function in the app is also one of the the most sophisticated in the market. So I went primarily with these plugs in my house. I bought the EU version from Germany, but since I order a lot of things from the U.S., there are some US version plugs in the house as well.

Lighting is one of the first things to be considered for being controlled in a smart home because it's an essential part of a house, and the light bulbs can be replaced relatively easily. Therefore the solutions are abundant, and even in Korea where HomeKit-compatible devices are practically non-existent in the market, Philips Hue series of smart lighting stand out as the rare exception. Only a subset are officially imported, but the available ones are priced lower than the overseas market, so I was quite happy to buy them locally. To start things off, I bought a Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance Starter Kit and a Dimmer Switch four months ago.


The kit contained three 2nd generation Hue White and Color Ambiance light bulbs and a HomeKit-compatible Hue Bridge. Buying them individually would be noticeably more expensive, so it's indeed a good value. I should note that 3rd generation bulbs with richer colours in the green spectrum were already available in overseas markets, but they have yet to be officially available in Korea even at the time of this writing. In my experience, it's not a critical difference and the 2nd generation ones hold up just fine.

After successfully deploying LED lamps across the FPL lamp fixtures, I thought that the lamps installed in the traditional screw-in sockets should be replaced as well. Ever since these lamps started to go mainstream about 5 years ago, the price kept dropping and the choices kept on growing. This meant that it was a good time to make the move.

Comparing the various offerings on the market, I ultimately settled on the BEAM series of lightbulbs from Sigma LED (formerly Sunsea). They were among the brightest for the rated power, yet priced competitively. Both the 8W and 10W versions cost me about US$3.75 (KRW 4,500) per bulb.


They were set to replace the 20W compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs made by Hankuk Lighting and installed throughout the house by default. Here is how they compare.


The LED bulbs are shaped closer to the traditional incandescent bulbs, making them thicker and shorter than the CFL ones. Because of the larger diameter, some of the fixtures that were designed only with the CFL in mind may have trouble taking in the 10W ones. This is why I got 8W ones as a fallback.

Meanwhile, the spec comparison reveals a similar trend seen with the longer cousins. The LED bulbs meant to replace the CFL comes in at about half the power consumption and slightly lower total amount of light. I'll be checking if the reality reflects these numbers, of course.

Having a smart meter giving real-time power consumption data provided a lot of insights for my home. The baseline load when everything is idle is about 80W, and the refrigerator running at full power adds 90W to that. So when I noticed that more than 300W were being used during the evening hours even with the TV turned off, I had to track down what the culprit was.

It turned out that the sole reason for this uptick was the lighting. Fluorescent lights in the living room and the study room were turned on for several hours every day and contributing much to the total consumption. Knowing that LED lights were more efficient and that the price has come down a lot recently, I decided to make some major investment.


As with a lot of apartments in Korea, the typical type of lighting installed was PL compact fluorescent lights, or FPL for short. It uses 4-pin 2G11 socket and has external ballast. Lots of replacement methods exist - lamp-only, ballast + lamp (socket is kept), or total replacement. As the lamp-only method is simplest by far and not much more expensive than replacing everything, the choice was obvious for me. I ordered the relevant LED lamps manufactured and sold by TopLux of Korea which were on sale - 23W version cost about KRW 21,000 (US$17.50) and 15W one, KRW 14,000 (US$11.70). Here is how they stack up with the existing FPL lamps.


According to the specifications, the LED lamp consumes about half the power while putting out about 85% of total light, or luminous flux, compared to the similarly sized FPL counterpart. This is indeed quite an increase in efficiency if it delivers. Visually, one side of the lamp is taken up by a long heat sink and uses the same four-pin layout. The pins themselves are simply round, not dimpled in the middle like the FPL it's replacing, so I suppose it won't "hook in" quite as well.