Has anyone pushed a smart plug to its limits, and beyond?
What happens? Does it smoke, melt, cause a fire, etc?
Memo to me: search YouTube.
The power monitoring ones I've been using supposed shut themselves down at, like, 10 amps or so.
I'm thinking, if you're not regularly switching at load, and just mostly monitoring it, you could get away with operating at the limit.
I’ve melted an Xiaomi smart plug 2 years ago, running my Fujitsu air conditioner on high power for 10 minutes. The plug is rated 10 Amps and on high power the AC consumption was 13 Amps.
Like any plug (dumb or smart), if you push it past its limit (or too long dancing around at/near limit), it's going to create heat so melting/smoke/fire are absolutely a risk.
I hate paying the Aeotec premium, but one thing I love about their ZW Smart Switch 7 is that I can program it to shut off at a certain power draw.
This is perfect for my wife's go-to space heater -- it's a long dumb story, but it's on a circuit that can't handle it running at max power. So if the heater's setting dial somehow gets bumped from Med to High and heater turns on, the smart switch immediately kills it. I love that peace-of-mind.
As one of the people who gets called out in the middle of the night, on weekends, during family events, etc., to either put out the fire or at least investigate the smoke when someone decides to operate something at the limit (or just past it, as the line is often fine), pleeeeeeeeease don't do this. Devices have ratings and limits for a reason.
You mean something like this?
Actually this is an Iris V1 plug rated at 1800 watts. I have used these plugs hundreds of times typically averaging around 1500 watts, in working environments of 120 degrees for as long as 96 hours.
Never had a problem except this one, and the cause was a worn outlet, resulting in a loose connection causing resistance that caused the overheating
Nope, bought Sonoff S31 Lite's because they have a relay that's rated 250V 16A/120V 23A in them, massive overkill for any US useage, I like overkill =)
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