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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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Your recommendation for smart plug (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm tinkering with our ventilation over-pressure function in combination with an inline fan I run when 3D printing or soldering, to get the fumes and particulates out while simultaneously not creating a massive vacuum inside. The plan is to control it with MQTT from HA to a PLC that controls the ventilation via RS-485.

Therefore I'm looking for a simple but clean looking smart plug that I can integrate with HA to let me know when the fan is on (pulling power, actual wattage is irrelevant) to automatically enable this function.

I know Sonoff makes some, but I always prefer personal advice over random search results.
Preferably Zigbee or WiFi (offline) as I don't have any Matter/Z-wave hub/dongle. Compact design and black would be nice, but not a must. Stability and ease of setup matters more than added functionality.

Does anyone have any personal experience to share?
I'm grateful if you do. Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yup, much higher than 550w. Mine will often settle down to 650 or 700 after getting the room to temperature, but on particularly hot days and when they are just turned on and trying to get the room to the set temperature, they can easily take 1200w. I have never had an issue with any smart outlet I have bought in the past with that either.

I can understand the company not wanting that liability though. A blanket statement is easier than making customers calculate wattage or manage how many high load devices they might have on a power strip with the AC.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Okay, that's really good information to have and I appreciate it because I'm not some sort of idiot and I'm not going to go plugging in tons of high current devices like that. So I know I'm not going to like burn my house down or something.

Before I even bought smart plugs, I heard that some smart plugs were made not great and couldn't handle the load put on them and caught fire. So I was very cognizant of that from the very beginning when choosing my equipment.

Like the first couple of times, I ran the air conditioner on the smart plug. I actually kept an eye on it and kept touching it to make sure that it wasn't getting hot or anything.