We’ve got a camera in a garden office, hooked up to a SmartThings Outlet. A smart plug can fix this by letting you cut power when you don’t want to record and turn the power back on when you need monitoring.įor the best results, think about how you can control the plug. Smart security cameras are a brilliant way to monitor your home, but it can be tricky to manage exactly when they record. If you don’t have a smart home system though, you can still use smart plugs.ĭevices from WeMo, Awair and the likes have their own apps you can use to set schedules and control whatever is plugged into your plug.

If you run your home on SmartThings, it will need to be a Z-Wave or Zigbee plug, HomeKit will most likely be Bluetooth. Third, make sure it will be compatible with your existing smart home system. Features on smart plugs include voice control with Alexa or the Google Assistant, IFTTT integration, HomeKit integration, and the option of power-tracking. Second, you need to choose the best smart plug for the job you’re looking to fill. For example, if you want a fan to turn on or off, you need a physical switch on the fan so that it springs to life when the power comes back use a Dyson fan and it just goes into standby mode when the power turns on. First, smart plugs only work with devices that have physical on/off switches. Before we get started, it’s worth running through a few things.

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