You may well have seen plenty of reviews and adverts for the Sonoff S26 WiFi Smart plug so I won’t go into too much technical detail here other than to say this VERY inexpensive wall socket can easily be re-flashed to run alternative software for those not to keen on relying on Chinese servers.
The S26 can be reflashed with nothing more than your PC and an inexpensive FTDI (USB to serial convertor) and can then run the excellent, free Tasmota software (sonoff release). Just be wary that the soldering connections are small.
I used the free ESP8266Flasher software to reprogram the units. https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-flasher
Tasmota supports not only Sonoff switching operations but also Amazon Alexa which means you can turn devices on and off via the local button, by Alexa speech or by your chosen software.. I use Node-Red on a Raspberry Pi with MQTT to control most of my devices including the … // Read more: original article.
