Digma and Redmond smart socket test: who has more brains?

We test­ed two sim­i­lar out­lets: Dig­ma DiPlug 160M and Red­mond Sky­Plug RSP-103S. Both of them allow you to turn on and off devices from any­where in the world where there is an Inter­net con­nec­tion, as well as pre­scribe cer­tain sce­nar­ios (algo­rithms) for work.

The fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence is that Dig­ma works via a Wi-Fi chan­nel, while Red­mond uses Blue­tooth. Do not rush to con­clu­sions: they are not so unam­bigu­ous.

Digma DiPlug 160M: it also counts kilowatts!

Let’s start with the out­let from Dig­ma: this is a fair­ly large “port” with a sin­gle con­trol but­ton on the end. Here is a sum­ma­ry of its capa­bil­i­ties.

• Remote turn on/off devices
• Set­ting dif­fer­ent work sce­nar­ios
• Sup­port for Google Home and Ama­zon Echo smart speak­ers
• The max­i­mum pow­er of the con­nect­ed device is 3.5 kW
• Ener­gy mon­i­tor­ing

To work with the out­let, you will need a Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n net­work and a gad­get with Android and iOS. Man­age­ment takes place through a pro­pri­etary appli­ca­tion Dig­ma Smart Life. Con­nect­ing a smart device is no more dif­fi­cult than wire­less head­phones: you need to find it in the appli­ca­tion and add a pass­word for the wire­less net­work.

The but­ton on the end is the only con­trol. If it glows red, it means that it is not con­nect­ed to the net­work. Blue — con­nect­ed and work­ing. By press­ing the but­ton, the smart sock­et can be turned off. The same is easy to do from a smart­phone: just press a huge but­ton on the screen, and the out­let de-ener­gizes the device.

Very use­ful fea­tures — work on a timer or sched­ule. For exam­ple, if you like to grow plants and use a phy­to­lamp, you can set it to work at cer­tain hours. And in prin­ci­ple, the timer will be use­ful for devices that lack it.

Even more com­plex cus­tomiza­tion options are scripts. They can be very dif­fer­ent, includ­ing very sur­pris­ing. For exam­ple, there is such an event as sun­rise and sun­set. Or a cer­tain ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture (obvi­ous­ly deter­mined by the weath­er fore­cast, and not by the fact). All that is need­ed for the script is to cre­ate a con­di­tion and a task. For exam­ple, after sun­set, turn on the device (if light­ing is con­nect­ed) or do it when the tem­per­a­ture drops below ‑10C (if we are talk­ing about a heater).

Speak­ing of heaters. The DiPlug 160M has a great fea­ture: pow­er con­sump­tion mon­i­tor­ing. You can eas­i­ly mea­sure how much elec­tric­i­ty is spent on heat­ing a room (say, per month). The main thing is not to con­nect devices more pow­er­ful than 3.5 kW. We, for exam­ple, for the sake of inter­est mea­sured how much elec­tric­i­ty a mul­ti­cook­er spends on cook­ing 4 serv­ings of rice: 0.3 kV.

Redmond SkyPlug RSP-103S: makes conventional technology smart

Unlike the DiPlug 160M, the Red­mond sock­et works with a Blue­tooth con­nec­tion. This is con­ve­nient if you just want to con­trol it from the next room. And what about more remote places — say, cot­tages? In this case, the man­u­fac­tur­er sug­gests using a sec­ond smart­phone or tablet as an inter­me­di­ate port. Of course, this port must be con­nect­ed to the Inter­net. The scheme seems too com­pli­cat­ed, but not every­one in the coun­try has Wi-Fi, and in this case, the net­work as such is not need­ed. So what do we have?

• Remote turn on/off devices
• Many ready-made work sce­nar­ios and the abil­i­ty to cre­ate your own
• No need for Wi-Fi net­work
• The max­i­mum pow­er of the con­nect­ed device is 2.2 kW
• Abil­i­ty to block the pow­er sup­ply

The cost is about 1000 rubles.

The sock­et is made very com­pact, the pow­er but­ton is bare­ly vis­i­ble on the front pan­el. When on, the indi­ca­tor glows green. To con­nect, you need to hold down the but­ton for a few sec­onds, and the device will enter Blue­tooth pair­ing mode. By the way, the use of “blue-toothed” tech­nol­o­gy is the prin­ci­pled posi­tion of Red­mond. The com­pa­ny believes that Blue­tooth is much more secure than Wi-Fiis prefer­able from the point of view of ener­gy con­sump­tion and min­i­miza­tion of radi­a­tion by devices.

Red­mond active­ly inte­grates its Ready for Sky remote con­trol sys­tem into home devices: even the brand’s ket­tle can be turned on / off from a smart­phone. Sky­Plug RSP-103S is an attempt to give users the abil­i­ty to make any tech­nol­o­gy smart. For this, the appli­ca­tion uses many ready-made sce­nar­ios for var­i­ous equip­ment. For exam­ple, a sim­ple grill can be sup­ple­ment­ed with a timer func­tion if it is not there. Or cre­ate a new “Defrost” mode.

The sock­et con­nect­ed with­out prob­lems (like any device with Blue­tooth). I imme­di­ate­ly asked for updates, and there were prob­lems with this — when I tried to update the soft­ware, a mes­sage appeared that the device was already in use by anoth­er process. It turned out that you just need to turn it off with a but­ton. In the end, every­thing worked out.

After instal­la­tion, you will be prompt­ed to select the device that the sock­et will con­trol. Most of them dif­fer only in the set of func­tions: for exam­ple, in addi­tion to the “On / Off” but­ton and the block­ing flag, they offer to set a sched­ule for the heater. Such a sched­ule is not applic­a­ble to the iron — this is under­stand­able.

It is much more fun to oper­ate Red­mond brand­ed appli­ances: a grill and a mul­ti-bak­er. The inter­faces to both devices have a “Recipes” tab, which, in fact, also rep­re­sent work sce­nar­ios.

TOTAL: Digma or Redmond?

Basic func­tions (remote on / off, timer or sched­ule oper­a­tion) are pro­vid­ed by both out­lets. And both can actu­al­ly make it much eas­i­er to work with house­hold appli­ances.

Dig­ma DiPlug 160M twice as expen­sive, eas­i­er to set up (if we are talk­ing about con­trol­ling equip­ment in dif­fer­ent rooms), can work with more pow­er­ful devices and has a nice bonus: ener­gy con­sump­tion cal­cu­la­tion.

Red­mond Sky­Plug RSP-103S small­er, very inex­pen­sive, does not require Wi-Fi, and can per­form many use­ful sce­nar­ios. It will suit both those who already have Red­mond appli­ances with Ready for Sky tech­nol­o­gy (because all devices oper­at­ing on this plat­form will be vis­i­ble on the smart­phone at once), and own­ers of devices from oth­er brands.

Learn more about smart tech­nol­o­gy:

• What to build a “smart” house from: remote con­trol, sen­sors and a ket­tle
• User Review: Google Home Mini Smart Speak­er Impres­sions