7 clever opportunities to automate your home with intelligent plugs

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Remember The rattling? The plug-in basic foods may have produced for a catchy jingle in the 1980s, but could also be seen as a primitive ancestor of today's smart plug, if they can say something of a few decades ago, is primitive. Intelligent plugs offer more convenience than the rattle so that you can control your devices from an app on your phone, your voice or schedule.

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There are many ways to use intelligent plugs to automate your home, including stupid devices in Kluge, to strengthen the safety of your house or to bring you more comfort to your life. Apart from the use of an intelligent plug for an old table lamp, you can also use it strategically to save your supply calculations, monitor your energy consumption or to improve the fire security of your house.

1. layer potential intruders

You can use an intelligent plug to automate lights if you are not in the city so that you turn on every evening so that it looks like someone is at home. Many people also use them to check the outdoor lights in a schedule and ensure that the exterior of their house is well lit for security. Improvement of home security is a popular use for intelligent plugs. However, there are more ways to use them beyond the obvious.

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An intelligent plug can lock your garage door opener so that you can cut it away during the night or whenever you can cut it away. This strategy could prevent a thief from using an entry code or a stolen remote control to enter your house. If you have a compatible motion sensor, you can set automation with your smart plug to turn on a light when the sensor detects the movement.

2. Create a movement -activated lighting structure

I added movement-activated lighting to my bathroom without using a movement sensor wall switch so that my lights are switched on as soon as I enter. Instead of using a movement sensor connected with the light, I have one Echo point On the way to the bathroom that has a occupancy sensor that turns on my lights by Alexa when someone comes in. You can do the same with every intelligent plug, Alexa and an echo point that also serves as an intelligent speaker and platform to communicate with the voice assistant, not just as an occupancy sensor.

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When someone enters the bathroom, Alexa says on my Echo Dot: “Hello, beautiful” and switches on the light. The lights are furnished with an intelligent switch, but they can do the same with an intelligent plug and a lamp. In addition, you can also add a time in which the light can remain, or automation so that the plug is switched off when people are not present. I stop my bathroom lights for 15 minutes, which ensures that they always turn off, and I don't have to run around my house that turns off all the lights that my children are left over.

Occupational and presence sensors are more precise than a simple movement sensor, since the latter can be triggered in a window through movement, even wind or car headlights. Apart from that, there are other attendance sensors such as that AQARA FP2Which can even recognize people to make another user aware of.

3 .. Improvement of climatonity

Intelligent plugs are useful to keep your home, especially if the weather is too hot. I have a stupid fan that is connected to an intelligent plug so that I can ask Alexa to turn on my fan if it is too hot and I prefer not to refuse the temperature of the air conditioning system. While a fan does not lower the temperature, it circulates the air, making them feel cooler. This approach means that you can save your supply calculations by adjusting your air conditioning a little warmer and performing a fan that consumes less kWh than a central unit.

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If you have a smart thermostat or a temperature sensor, you can also program your smart plug so that you automatically switch on your fan when the room is too hot. A room heating on an intelligent plug would meet the same purpose in winter, and an intelligent plug can automatically switch it off when a desired temperature is reached.

4. Insert your hot tools

Regardless of whether you have a curling iron that you forget to switch off or have someone at home who constantly offers your hot tools, an intelligent plug is a perfect solution. I use an intelligent plug for my flat iron, and I never have to wonder if I forgot to turn it off – I can check my smartphone and confirm that this is the case. When I have the iron switched on, I can switch off the smart plug from a distance. You can also set your hair tools in the morning if you prepare for the day.

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If you are a practical or clever person who has soldering tools and hot glue guns, intelligent plugs can also become your safety device. If you insert these tools with an intelligent plug, you can easily switch them on and off to control them from your smartphone from your smartphone. You can even control you with your voice with a virtual assistant like Amazon Alexa, Siri or Google Gemini assistant by just saying: “Alexa, switch on the glue.”

5. Limit the screen time at home

Limiting my children's screen time is one of the latest uses that I have received from my smart plug. I have put your playroom TV on an intelligent plug and can then set up schedules, control the device with my voice via Alexa and switch on and off from my phone according to the screen time.

While this strategy may not work with tablets, it can be applied to other electronics such as gaming consoles and even your router so that you can switch off the Wi-Fi to limit your children's screen time.

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During the week, my children have to do their homework and take a shower before they can watch TV. So I switch off the intelligent plug to the television until you have done your tasks. I even put the plug behind the television with an extension cable so that you cannot simply press the button when nobody looks.

6. Save electricity invoices

A smart plug gives you more control over which devices are drawing and when to switch off. With intelligent plugs, you can switch off the power supply to vampire devices. You can also plan times of the day if these devices should be switched on so that your coffee machine does not pull strength during the night, for example.

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Many intelligent plugs offer energy monitoring and give insights into which devices in your house consume the greatest electricity. This information will help you make a well -founded decision about when devices should be switched off.

Smart plugs still take off when switching off, but that is about 1 to 2 watts for a Wi-fi-capable device, not 5 to 10 watts that draw televisions and some gaming consoles when they are switched off. Intelligent plugs have to draw a small amount of electricity while they are switched off to maintain a network connection. Plugs with energetic connectivity protocols such as Zigbee or Z wave can only draw 0.3 watts at idle.

7. Make older devices intelligent

Making older devices intelligent is one of the best uses for smart plugs and why they were originally created. Every year I put my holiday lights on intelligent plugs so that I can set them to a schedule or ask one of the virtual assistants in my home to switch them on or off.

Coffee machines are great candidates for an intelligent plug. Simply let them prepare overnight and let them switch them on every morning while preparing for the day. This ensures that you always have a hot coffee that is waiting for you when you enter your kitchen.

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With a smart plug with an older router, you can reset your Wi-Fi network Remote without taking off your router and locking it again. However, you can lose the connection if your smart plug does not use a non-Wi-Fi connectivity protocol like Bluetooth.

I also have one Smart plug outdoors Set up for my terrace cord lights that turn on every day at sunset to ensure that we always have lighting on the deck.