NP-02B

I bought the NP-02B to reboot my office firewall and server from home. The unit is solid metal (no plastic), made in USA. The supplied power cord is heavy gauge. The full user manual is available from the website (46 pages) and is written in good English. The website has an actual NP-02 on the Internet that you can play with. Note that the on/off/reboot buttons don't have any UI tactile feedback; instead an adjacent 'power' GIF changes color from black to green. This confused me because somebody previously messed up the demo's timing settings so my hitting the reboot button didn't do anything and I thought the web demo was broken (it wasn't). This particular low-end model does not support incoming e-mail to power-cycle, only outgoing e-mail to alert you when autoping fails. Nor does it support environmental reporting. I put the unit outside my firewall (so I could power-cycle it) and I was surprised to discover that the telnet interface allowed power-cycling and firmware reset without a password! Fortunately telnet is easily disabled from the web UI. The web UI does not support HTTPS encryption -- your password is transmitted plaintext over the Internet. Some of the defaults needed adjusting. For example the default for power-cycle (reboot) is 2 seconds. A better default would have been 10 seconds, as lots of CPE and PSU equipment nowadays can survive a 2-second outage without interruption. This is an excellent unit and I would buy it again. Hopefully a future firmware update will fix the security issues if you put the unit outside your firewall.

This works very well and is reliable. It was also easy to configure an automatic scheduled reboot of the connected equipment, with a custom amount of time powered off. Very helpful for a variety of different kinds of equipment that needs a regular reboot automatically, but does not have a built-in mechanism to reboot itself, such as many IT devices, NVRs, routers, etc. The only thing lacking (and the reason for the 4 star rating) is the lack of an adequate built-in wall mounting option. It would be nice if this came with a couple of simple brackets to attach it to a wall with screws. I made something that works, but it does not look as nice as I would prefer.

This switch will work well if you only need two switchable power outlets. It's easy to configure and has been real reliable. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I've only used these for remote power control. I bought one in 2013 and another in 2014 and one of them lasted until 2017 and the other died in 2022 so that's four years and eight years which isn't bad, however, I have allot of other network hardware that just work. I think that the problem is probably the power supply which is built in and there's no instructions on how to fix that. There are other devices that do the same thing for about the same price. I'd recommend trying something else. I bought one of these in 2014 (same company -- bigger/more expensive device) and it is still going strong. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0039OZKPE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have an 8-camera NVR that manages my PoE cameras and, while otherwise a fantastic unit, one rare and intermittent problem is that IP cameras can and do sometimes need a reboot. Could be a slight power fluctuation/brown-out or some other interference, but sometimes one or more of them will become "stuck" for lack of a better term. The only fix is to cut the power to the NVR with a full shutdown and boot-up, but that cannot be done remotely, only a soft reboot that never actually depowers the cameras (and thus never properly reboots them). Enter this unit, the NP-02, from Synaccess. With this, I can remotely log in and either shutdown or trigger a configurable (for example, 20 second) power cycle of my equipment with a single click. Talk about exactly what I needed! What's better, the unit is build well, looks and feels rock solid, and is an American-made product. It looks fantastic in a rack setup or sitting on a shelf, and is super easy to configure and use. I had mine up and running in literally 5 to 10 minutes. There are certainly other devices (search for "PDU") that offer the same functionality, but none that I felt were as well made as this unit. If you're looking for a network appliance to reboot a couple of outlets remotely (and independently), this is probably one of the best options out there. They have more expensive units that can handle 5 and 8 outlets, but my setup is pretty simple and that much would be overkill for me. Price wise, you pay the biggest margin per outlet on this model (that is, per outlet price is cheaper if you size up) but in my case it was more a matter of not having any legitimate need for more ports. If I had that many pieces of equipment to remotely power cycle, I would go bigger in a heartbeat. Highly recommended!

Have had to replace two of these, run hot and have failed as noted twice. Software is not exactly easy to use. Look at the APC stuff instead.

I bought this to detect when our DSL modem is flaking out. It works well in that regard. I've got it setup to ping Google's DNS servers every 45 seconds and after 6 failures, reboot the DSL modem by turning it off for 45 seconds. I used the web interface for setup and twice needed to do a hard complete reset as it became completely unavailable. I wanted to set a static IP via our router's static IP services, but came away deciding to set it up manually in the UI. I did not try the other connection (COM port). Once configured, it works well. The logs while not real long, tell me when it needed to be rebooted. You can also remotely toggle the power to the connected devices. You can name outlets, get event notifications, schedule automatic resets or availability, ... it's got quite a few features. I'm really only using the auto-ping feature as described above though. I really like the device as it means the Internet is more highly available, even when I'm not at home (so things like our Internet connected security system and thermostats continue to function). It's not cheap, but it's a great frustration reducer (and means I don't need to walk down two flights of stairs when the DSL modem is not behaving).

This is an absolutely great device to remotely restart "frozen" hardware. I have a lot of things in my house controlled via HomeSeer automation console. My dilemma was: what do I do when that console itself freezes or simply becomes inaccessible remotely? This Remote Power Switch solved that problme! As long as i still have Internet in the house (i.e. my cable modem works and there is power), I can remotely log into this Remote Power Switch and "pull the plug", so to speak, on my frozen HA console. Wait one minute, then restore power, which forces the console to reboot. Voila! Solid build, easy set up, USA-based support. Highly recommended!

Unreliable, flaky device. This unit lost all settings and stopped working. Warranty handling is very poor from manufacturer.