Smart home: Smart Plug
By Kuhu Kinnori
Sometimes after a hard day’s work do you throw yourself in the bed to relax, but then you remember that you didn’t turn on the fan? Or maybe when you’re about to fall asleep, you forgot to turn off the light at the furthest corner of the room? The latest technological innovation called the “Smart Plug” may solve these minor inconveniences. A smart plug is an efficient and affordable way to control the regular “mindless” electronics through a phone’s compatible app or voice command setup. This intelligent appliance bridges the gap between the connected device by giving them some fantastic additional features.
What is the Smart Plug?
The smart plug is essentially a plug that connects to an electronic device through a socket. It may not sound like much, but it has some amazing features that make it better than a regular plug. The smart plug essentially breathes life into regular electronics. With the help of a wireless internet connection, it can control appliances remotely and allow unique features like scheduling functions of connected appliances. Besides, the smart plug can pair with a mobile app and smart home assistant devices like Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, etc. While most brands make single, smart plugs that can be interconnected, there are some multi-plug models that can connect more than one device together at one place.
Not just an Electrical Plug
The possible uses of the smart plugs are endless. Primarily, a smart plug can turn any appliance on or off far away from the connection by just the press of a button on a command app on a user’s phone, tablet or laptop. You could even be in a different area of a foreign country, yet be able to remotely control your digital devices. So, even if you are far from home and anxious about whether you turned off all the lights in the house, the smart plug can save you from worries.
Smart plugs have valuable features like setting timers that allow you to control when or for how long you want a device to work without manually handling the device. In this way, you could brew your fresh coffee in the morning, or perhaps schedule the air conditioner to turn off by itself 3 hours after your bedtime.
A key feature of the smart plug is that it allows you to monitor and display energy consumption in your daily life. The smart plug is essential to monitor the amount of electricity consumed by each appliance used by a user at home or in a shared office space. Therefore, this device helps save and optimize unwanted expenditures related to energy consumption, and ultimately saves electrical energy, a limited resource in the world.
Most people overlook one issue about our daily appliances – “standby power consumption”. Some power is used up by a device even though it might be turned off. So counting such power consumption of all electrical appliances within a household adds up to a large amount. The smart plug offers a solution by cutting off unnecessary power to turn off devices in this scenario.
Additionally, most smart plugs have two-factor authentication and child lock features that allow an adult to disable the power button so that curious children or pets may not disable the plugs. Smart plugs can also reduce screen time on TV or game consoles, therefore helping families bond outside of the digital lifestyles.
Final Thoughts
The Smart Plug is an amazing tool that allows users to divert their attention away from electrical appliances and into more productive issues or relaxation. This is only possible because the smart plug guarantees cost efficiency, energy-saving, and increased connectivity between the appliances within the house. This brings the user one step closer to building a futuristic “Smart Home” as he pleases.
