This is just going to be a quick one. Not seen much of Banggood recently but now that the Chinese New Year is over and hopefully we’re on the other side of the Chinese Policy reversal on Covid, it seems that Banggood are bouncing back. So here, I have a new device called the Square Temperature and Humidity Sensor. I don’t know for sure if that’s a brand name or just a reference to it’s shape. Anyway, the model reference nuber is MIR-TE200-WF.
This device does have one thing that sets it apart from other WiFi free-standing displays of this type… it uses a set of THREE AA batteries. Everyone else seems hell-bent on using AAA or smaller batteries (CR2032 or similar) – great for a slim finish but that often makes for frequent battery replacements (inconvenient and not so good for the environment).
I fitted a set of alkaline AA batteries at which point the device turned on and started showing temperature, humidity, battery and WiFi status.
Instinctively I long-pressed the little button (5 seconds) on the top and sure enough the WiFi indicator started flashing. The device is compatible with the SmartLife App and so I opened the APP and hit the little + symbol to add a new device. Shortly thereafter it automatically selected the WiFi my phone is attached to and asked me to confirm I wanted to use that WiFi, after which a pretty logging display of temperature and humidity appeared in the APP. There are options to select degrees C or F and to turn on and off a low-battery warning. Hopefully I won’t need the latter for a long time.
It is also possible to set “scenes” and enable Google and Alexa compatibility… and that’s about it. A nice, solid looking unit… just a shame from my perspective that integrating Tuya and Node-Red is no longer trivial as otherwise I’d have pulled the unit into my Node-Red home control system.
Just to be sure there would be no surprises, I switched my phone from WiFi to 4G and blew on the unit to change it’s temperature – sure enough, seconds later the phone updated… so this device is of the “phone home” type which updates a SmartLife server and hence can be read from anywhere.
