With the BBQ AREA The Swedish furniture company IKEA is expanding its Smart home product range about a new switchable power outlet. The compact device transforms conventional electrical appliances into intelligent components of a connected home.

Smart plugs are one of the easiest ways to transform an existing home into a smart home. They are plugged in between the wall socket and the device and then allow control via app, voice assistant or automated scenes.

With the GRILLPLATS, IKEA is primarily focusing on simple operation, energy monitoring and wide compatibility through Matter over Thread.

What is the IKEA GRILLPLATS?

The BBQ AREA It is a compact smart plug that is inserted between the wall socket and the electrical device. This allows any connected device to be digitally controlled.

Devices can be controlled via a smart home app or automations, for example:

• Turn on and off via smartphone
• automatically control according to schedule
• integrate into smart home scenes

This allows devices such as lamps, coffee machines or fans to be automatically activated or completely disconnected from the power supply.

Support from Matter

An important feature of the GRILLPLATS is the support of the open standard Matter.

Matter It was developed to simplify the interoperability of devices from different manufacturers. Devices using this standard can be integrated into many smart home ecosystems and used across platforms. IKEA is also using it in its latest generation of Smart home devices increasingly relying on Matter to enable better compatibility and easier setup.

Examples include Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings and Home Assistant.

The device uses the Matter over Thread wireless standard. Therefore, a Thread Border Router is required for control via a smartphone, such as the [insert name of the device].

• Aqara Smart Hub M200*
• Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2*
• Amazon Echo Show 8 or 11*
• Home Assistant Yellow*
• Nest Hub Google 2nd Gen*
• Apple HomePod mini*

Measuring the energy consumption of individual devices

One particularly practical feature of the new socket is the integrated energy consumption measurement.

The GRILLPLATS can monitor the power consumption of connected devices and display the corresponding values. This gives users a better overview of how much energy individual devices actually consume.

The integrated energy measurement also enables interesting automations. The user demonstrates how this can work in practice. mocelet very clearly illustrated in a post on Reddit.

Especially with rising energy prices, transparent analysis of electricity consumption is becoming increasingly important.

Price and availability

IKEA often pursues a strategy with its smart home products that involves low entry prices. The price for GRILLPLATS is expected to be €8.99, making it significantly cheaper than the recently introduced smart plug. Shelly Plug M Gen3.

Source/Photo: (Amazon / IKEA)