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!
I’m using the third reality plug and it works really well although they don’t recommend using it with motor things such as air conditioners etc because of the startup. They recommended I find a contactor plug instead of a relay plug in order to run air conditioners and stuff like that with it.
Sadly I can’t find the inrush current on it, but I’m hoping it will be fine. If I burn one, I’ll look to build some sort of soft starter myself.
This hobby has turned into a deep rabbit hole long ago anyways….
Thank you for the advice!
I am running a 550 watt air conditioner on mine and it works. From what I can tell, it seems to take about 2000 watts immediately at startup, which is ~17 amps. The plug I have is rated for 15 amps and it seems to be alright. So far anyway.
Huh, hadnt heard about that. I have been using my third reality energy monitoring smart plugs on two Air Conditioners for over two years lol
Oh really? What is the wattage on your air conditioners? I am running one of the third reality plugs on my air conditioner that takes 550 watts and that’s what I emailed them about and they recommended me to not use it. So I’m wondering if you’re using more powerful air conditioners than that.
According to them, it’s not the operating wattage that’s the problem. It’s that when the motor starts up initially, it can pull something like two or three thousand watts all at once for a very brief amount of time and then it settles down. I’m in the United States, so my plug is capable of 15 amps at 120 volts, which is 1,800 watts. They said those brief spikes at the start could weld the contacts together in the relay and cause it not to be able to turn off again.
But if you’ve been using it for two years, and especially if you’ve been using it for two years on air conditioners that are above 550 watts, that would make me less concerned.
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.
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.
they sell ‘soft start’ hardware to mitigate the initial load but they ain’t cheap