this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
40 points (100.0% liked)

homeassistant

14315 readers
197 users here now

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

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [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.