Larry Magid: Turning ordinary small appliances into smart ones
WiFi plugs can extend the life of old-school items
Like many households, my wife and I have a fair number of small appliances like room fans, space heaters and kitchen appliances including an air fryer, microwave and indoor grill. Some of these, like our Atomi space heater, our Cosari Air Fryer, our Bosch stove top and our Toshiba microwave are “smart,” in that they have a WiFi connection and an app that reports their current state such as whether they’re on or off, their temperature and time left before shut-off).
Some let you use the app or your voice (via Amazon Alexa, Google Home or Apple Siri) to turn them on and off or set a temperature, but others don’t. The app and voice control are handy, but what I need most from these appliances is the ability to turn them off at an appointed time so there’s no waste of electricity or risk of a fire if I forget or if I’m cooking and want to walk away and let the appliance turn off when the food is ready.
Other appliances in my home are not so smart. These include some old heaters and fans that I bought before the invention of WiFi and even some newer devices that don’t have smart home features or even auto shut-off.
For many of those small appliances, my solution is WiFi plugs like Kasa Smart Plug Mini 15A, Smart Home Wi-Fi Outlets, which are currently available from Amazon for $21.99 for a four-pack. So, for about $5.50 per device, I’m able to turn a regular appliance into a relatively smart one. I say “relatively,” because the smart plug only allows me to turn it on or off. It can’t set the temperature or redirect the air in the case of a fan or heater.
These plugs come with a smartphone app that allows you to set an on-and-off schedule, but they also work with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. That means you can turn them on or off with a voice command or set a timer such as “turn on the heater at 9 p.m.,” or tell it to turn it off at a certain time or after a certain number of minutes or hours.
Even many of today’s small appliances aren’t “smart.” I recently bought a low-cost humidifier at Walgreens that only has an on-and-off switch. I plugged it into a smart plug, so now I can turn it on when I’m in bed by saying “Alexa turn on the humidifier” and have it programmed to automatically turn itself off at 6:30 every morning. I could have spent more on a smart humidifier with more sophisticated controls, but this is sufficient for my needs.
In a recent column, I mentioned that I used ChatGPT to help shop for an indoor grill. After it arrived, I discovered that the one I bought, the Cuisinart GR-5BP1 Electric Griddler Five, has a timer, but it just counts up or down and doesn’t turn off the grill. I thought of returning it, but other than the lack of auto-shutoff, I liked its features, so I initially connected it to a smart plug. But one day I neglected to set the plug, and it overcooked my food. That’s when I realized that what I wanted was more of a manual timer where I had to set a timer before starting to grill. My solution was to spend $13 on a Cokwel Countdown Timer Outlet that has small buttons to set the timer for the desired amount of time ranging from 1 minute to 4 hours. If I only need 8 minutes, I’ll press the 1-minute button 8 times and walk away.
I also have smart plugs connected to my home’s Christmas lights, which turn on at sunset and off later in the evening. We also use them for decorative lighting in the house that I turn on with a voice command but have them set to automatically turn off late at night just in case I forget to turn them off.
When buying a smart plug or a timer plug for an appliance, be sure to check the amperage rating to avoid overloading. The ones I bought are rated at 15 amps, which is sufficient for the appliances I use it for. This is especially important to check with any device that heats up.
The smart plugs I used for these appliances only turn them on or off, but there are also lamp plugs that can be used as a dimmer as long as you’re using a dimmable bulb. Another solution is smart bulbs that not only turn on or off at whatever level of brightness you want, but in some cases, can also change color. My porch light and one of the lights in my living room have Sengled Wi-Fi color-changing light bulbs. You need to set them up with the Sengled app, but once set up, you can use the Alexa or Google Home app to configure when they turn on or off. You can also set the brightness level and color. The Sengled app also allows you to have the bulb rotate colors (festive setting). The Christmas setting alternates between red and green, and there are also settings for Halloween and other options.
There are numerous different types of smart device standards such as Zigbee, Zwave, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Matter. Some, like Zwave and Zigbee, require a hub that broadcasts a signal to the devices. Others, like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Matter, don’t require hubs. Most of the new plugs and bulbs in my house are WiFi, because they work reliably as long as they can pick up a WiFi signal. Matter is a relatively new standard that’s said to be backward compatible with other standards. I recently ordered a Matter light bulb but haven’t tested it.
The portable air conditioner in my bedroom has a remote control but no automatic time settings. To make it smart, I bought a $99 Sensibo Sky, Smart Wireless Air Conditioner Controller that not only turns it on and off but also controls the temperature through an app or by voice. It comes with a small infrared transmitter and communicates with the AC unit as if it were a remote control.
What I love about all these retrofit timers and controllers is that they work with devices I already have, saving me money and at least slightly reducing my environmental impact by not having to replace my old devices. At the risk of sounding like I’m bragging, I think that, too, is pretty smart.
Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist. Contact him at larry@larrymagid.com.