New 'Wemo Bridge' Will Bring HomeKit Support to Belkin's Wemo Line This Fall

Thursday May 25, 2017 5:00 AM PDT by Juli Clover
Belkin today announced that its Wemo line of smart home devices will support HomeKit starting this fall with the launch of a new HomeKit-enabled Wemo Bridge.

The Wemo Bridge, which will connect to any home Wi-Fi router via an Ethernet cable, will allow current Wemo Smart Plugs and Light Switches to connect to a HomeKit setup. Wemo products will respond to Siri voice commands and will be able to interface with other HomeKit devices in Scenes when connected to the bridge.

"Wemo is offering this bridge to address the overwhelming request from customers to make currently installed Wemo products work with HomeKit and other HomeKit compatible products," said Brian Van Harlingen, chief technology officer at Belkin International. "We're proud to work with Apple to bring together two of the most influential Smart Home platforms. Wemo has been providing smart home devices for more than five years, and millions of people use Wemo devices every day. The Wemo Bridge will allow current and future Wemo users to experience the benefits of HomeKit, including Siri integration and interoperability with other HomeKit devices while also leveraging all the Wemo features customers enjoy."
With the addition of HomeKit support, Wemo products will work with almost all connected home solutions on the market, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Nest Learning Thermostat (Home and Away modes), and IFTTT.

Bridge-compatible Wemo devices include the Dimmer, Mini Smart Plug, Insight Smart Plug, and Light Switch.

Belkin plans to debut the Wemo Bridge in the fall. Pricing has not yet been announced.

Tags: Belkin, WeMo
29 comments


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DaveMcM76
30 months ago
About bloody time, but I'll believe it when I can order it - WeMo Homekit support was supposed to be coming "Very Soon" in January 2015 if this article ('https://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/13/belkin-wemo-homekit-support/') was to be believed...
Rating: 3 Votes
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lw9090
30 months ago
2 years too late.. I sold my 12 WeMo's and moved on..... Screw you Belkin
Rating: 3 Votes
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Insleep
30 months ago
You can already add HomeKit support to WeMo switches for free with Homebridge ('https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge'). All you need is a computer -- could be a Raspberry Pi, old Windows PC, Mac, etc. I run it on my main machine (2012 Mac mini) and it works really well.
Rating: 2 Votes
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urbanslaughter1997
30 months ago
This would be a great product if it weren't for the fact that Wemo is as unintuitive as you can get, not to mention buggy, and simply doesn't work. I bought one outlet to try it out. I won't be buying any more. Compared to my Philips hue products (which are NOT fantastic) these simply do not work.
Rating: 2 Votes
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Vasilioskn
30 months ago
Basically we need a bunch of hubs to use HomeKit , does anyone else think this is inconvenient and kind of sloppy on Apples part?
Rating: 2 Votes
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bsbeamer
30 months ago
WEMO already works pretty easily with SmartThings (without any added hardware pieces). SmartThings also supports Z Wave and ZigBee protocols. Until there's a device/hub that just works with everything, we're going to constantly need to look at cobbled together solutions like this.

...Also looks like that HomeKit adapter hub rumored from a few months ago will not be happening.
Rating: 2 Votes
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profets
30 months ago

2 years too late.. I sold my 12 WeMo's and moved on..... Screw you Belkin


I had a handful of wemo devices as well. A few light switches that failed and I couldn't get working again. I moved on and used it as an opportunity to try out some home kit enabled devices. I'm quite surprised at how stable they've been.
Rating: 2 Votes
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cmaier
30 months ago

Basically we need a bunch of hubs to use HomeKit , does anyone else think this is inconvenient and kind of sloppy on Apples part?


No.

You don't need hubs if the device is engineered to begin with for HomeKit. These hubs are mostly for older devices.

And the improved security is worth the trade offs. I feel much more confident with a HomeKit setup than with the alternatives.
Rating: 1 Votes
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cmaier
30 months ago
Lots of companies have announced bridges like this to add HomeKit to their existing products. So far, it seems, none have actually been released - instead they end up replacing their old products with new products with built-in HomeKit, or abandon HomeKit altogether. At least that has been the case with several products I own. Hope this time it's for real.
Rating: 1 Votes
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rhett7660
30 months ago

2 years too late.. I sold my 12 WeMo's and moved on..... Screw you Belkin


While I didn't have twelve of them, I too sold all of my WEMO items. I had a terrible time with them. Of course others like them, but I did not. Moved on to Lutron and not looking back.
Rating: 1 Votes
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