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The WeMo Mini Smart Plug Shows Smart Home Technology is Costco Ready

You know that technology is ready beyond the early adopter technology enthusiasts when you find it at Costco. Smart home technology is now easy and cheap enough to be sold to the masses at Costco where you can now find the WeMo Mini Smart Plug from Belkin.

The WeMo Mini Smart Plug at Costco now comes in Costco style bulk packaging in one of the main shopping aisles, and is one of the best deals out there. The Costco packaging comes with two plugs.

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The WeMo Mini Smart Plug uses Wi-Fi (802.1n) to connect to your home's Wi-Fi network and be controlled using Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. It does not work with Apple Siri based HomeKit although you can use the Wemo App on the iPhone to control the plug.

You can connect a light stand, electrical appliance, or any device that can turn on and off simply by opening up the power to the AC outlet it is attached to.

To open the packaging, there are tear off strips in the back which tear apart the packaging into three sections.

Unfortunately these strips don't work too well, being too weak to be pulled all the way down without tearing themselves apart.

Eventually we were able to get the packaging open using a lot of fingernails.

The WeMo Mini Smart Plug comes simply with some documentation in addition to the plugs.

The WeMo Mini Smart Plug has a single button used to turn on and off the plug.

The WeMo Mini Smart Plug gets its power directly from the AC power outlet so no separate AC cord or adapter is needed.

The WeMo Mini Smart Plug sold at Costco is only rated for US AC power input and can support AC output of up 15 amps (or 1800 watts at 120 volts) that can support half a horsepower.