SwitchBot Relay 1PM switch
pros and cons
- It has a compact design that fits behind a switch or socket.
- It’s easy to fit and set up.
- The app is packed with features.
- Installation can be fiddly.
- The unit has to be fitted in an enclosure to reduce the risk of electric shock.
on Google.
Has someone in your life ever yelled at you for leaving the lights on? Despite the shift to LED lights, it’s still a good idea to turn things off because, while one light might only cost about a dollar a month to run 24/7/365 (here, I’m assuming it’s a 6-watt bulb and your electricity costs $0.20 per kWh), think about how many light bulbs you have at home. It soon adds up.
Also: How I cut my power bill with IFTTT automation – in 4 simple steps
But sometimes, something that you leave on might draw a lot more power than you think, and if it’s a pain to turn on and off, or if it looks like it’s not doing much when it’s in standby mode, people are going to be tempted to leave it on.
Something like a big coffee machine in a café, perhaps.
. This is a palm-sized Bluetooth- and Wi-Fi-controlled switch that you can use to automate switches and lights, and make your dumb home appliances a lot smarter. Don’t let its tiny size — it measures 1.6 x 1.4 x 0.6 inches and weighs just 0.9 oz — fool you. There’s a lot of cool stuff packed into this package.
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Here, you have a package that can take AC inputs from 100 V to 240 V at both 50 and 60 Hz (so, essentially, it’s compatible worldwide) up to 16 A. On top of this, it can handle DC power ranging from 24 V to 30 V, making it a good choice for low-power solutions.
Already got a smart home ecosystem? The SwitchBot Relay will no doubt fit in!
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
The unit comes with pretty good instructions on how to fit it, but if you’re in any doubt, consult an electrician, since you don’t want to electrocute yourself or those around you. The unit is designed to be housed in an enclosure, like behind the faceplate of a switch or socket — hence the small size — and shouldn’t be left in the open, since the screws on the unit are live at mains voltage and could deliver a nasty, and possibly fatal, shock. So this isn’t something that you should have dangling within reach of people, kids, or pets.
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Also, bear in mind that the unit is not water-resistant in any way, so it should be treated like any other plug, socket, or switch that you have connected at home.
Perfect for home automation
The SwitchBot app offers a whole host of features.
There’s the basic turning things on or off, as well as scheduling when things should be turned off and on. Beyond the basics, it can also customize what happens when the power is restored after a shutdown (do you want the switch on, off, or in whatever the last state was?), or you can have missed-touch prevention, a feature that asks you to confirm if you want the switch operated.
This is a nice touch that prevents something important from being turned off (although I don’t recommend connecting anything super critical, like a life support machine, to this switch!).
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There’s also an NFC feature that allows you to pair a SwitchBot tag
The SwitchBot app is well made and packed with features.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
Then there’s power monitoring, both in the form of a live reading and historical data. This is where you get to find out how much of a power hog your devices are. There’s nothing like seeing how much power something uses to make people change their ways. You can take a deep dive into usage and, if you’re like me, export the data so you can number-crunch it with your favorite spreadsheet app.
Wasting a lot of power
Which brings me back to the coffee machine, a La Spaziale S5, a beast of a machine that can pull some 4,500 W of power at full load. Over a working day, this can easily be 20 kWh of power.
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That’s a lot, but it’s working, and it’s being paid to work.
The truth is that you’re probably going to buy more than one switch, as well as a whole raft of other smart gadgets (after all, who doesn’t need at least one FingerBot?), so consider this your first purchase in what will be a slippery slope of home automation addiction.