Love the channel and joined when I first found you on RU-vid as I love all the hacks you do, Is there any chance of seeing the Pound land socket teardown, I am interested in the quality of the product? Thanks, Bob in the UK.
I'm currently living in Portugal (Madera Island). So I'm nowhere near a poundland 😜. But I might be able to carefully take one apart that's in use at the moment, I'll try not to damage the casing too much. What I can tell you is that they use a Big good quality 16A relay, and they beefed up the tracks with with copper bars, so they can handle plenty of current. There's also an internal 2A fuse, just in case the internal electronics goes wrong. It seems pretty well made to "British standards". It's not manufactured badly like other Chinese crappy smart plugs.
Hello, I made the mistake of plugging a heater to this plug so it I believe it damaged the relay. It works fine when turned on but no voltage is provided to the output. I see a burn mark on the relay . Do I just replace that module?
Hmm... I'm looking to modify an Alexa-enabled smart plug, so that I can use a remote push-button switch OR the built-in WIFI capabilities to activate it. Any useful thoughts or recommendations on a particular plug? Application: I have an electric control panel box with a traditional 120v, maintained action switch that activates a 120v contactor. I want to be able to activate it via push-button OR via Alexa app or Alexa voice command. Full details of application: This push-button switch activates the main power contactor of my electric home brewery. I'd like to be able to use an Alexa routine to turn it on roughly 1 hour before I wake up, which would make it power on and start heating my water to my target set temp in my PID controller. -> The routine would then turn on my grain mill and start crushing the barley 15 minutes before I wake up. This would dramatically accelerate my brew days getting me back to my family about 90 minutes faster than I do today without any kind of automation...
I would recommend you use something like a Shelly 1 or a Sonoff MINI, as these are highly flexible smart switches which can be used for many different applications, and accept external inputs, like different kinds of switches. You can change how they are triggered by a momentary Push or toggle switch. You can probably directly drive the contactor coil from one of these. For example you can use the sonoff mini, with a push button connected to its S1 and S2 inputs, and the output can then switch the contactor or the original switch.
Is it possible for us to change the software service provider? If i purchased a smart plug from company A. But realise that the back end software is not as good as company B , could i reset or reinstall the software in some way to make my device accessible via company B back end software?
