Exploiting once again the collaboration with Mijia, Xiaomi has just released the new one on the market Smart Socket Bluetooth Gateway Edition. This is a special version of a smart socket that also functions as a connection for other smart home devices.
This is certainly not the first version that the two companies put on the market even if, in terms of practicality of use, it is perhaps the best. In spite of the first version that uses the Zigbee protocol and therefore requires a central hub to operate (Xiaomi makes one available under the Aqara brand), the latter uses WiFi to be controlled via smartphone.
The Bluetooth chip that carries with it instead has a secondary function that has the purpose of expanding the influence of Xiaomi and Mijia in the smart home: operating as a gateway (connecting bridge), allows other devices designed to operate at low power as humidity sensors, temperature sensors and motion sensors to take advantage of the smart socket to upload data to Mijia servers. In other words, they pass their data to the smart socket which then takes care of re-directing them, via WiFi, to the servers.
Clearly users can remotely monitor the appliances connected to the new Xiaomi smart socket via the Mijia app. At the same time, this new device can be used with smart speakers (Redmi has just launched one) and smart displays (Xiaomi has just launched one) equipped with the voice assistant. XiaoAI.
An extra function that has nothing smart though is the possibility of charging electronic devices thanks to the double USB Type-A port on the side (it would have been interesting to be able to enable and disable each of the two ports as happens with the main socket).
Coming to the sale price, Xiaomi is proposing this new Smart Socket Bluetooth Gateway Edition for just 79 yuan which, at the exchange rate, is equivalent to about 9 euros.
As you might have guessed, this is a product at the moment. intended for the Chinese market only. The hope, however, is that, given Xiaomi’s desire to expand its smart home market also in Europe, it will also arrive in our market (where among other things there are already several other sensors that use the Zigbee protocol).
