Smart Power Supply: Overview of Network Filters with WLAN and Bluetooth

The surge protector can cause a fire

For most net­work fil­ters, the total pow­er lim­it is 3500 watts. You can find infor­ma­tion about pow­er, as, for exam­ple, on this fil­ter, near the on / off but­ton. This max­i­mum pow­er must nev­er be exceed­ed by con­nect­ing sev­er­al appli­ances at the same time.

Most con­sumers have no idea how much elec­tric­i­ty a par­tic­u­lar device con­sumes. So, for exam­ple, an auto­mat­ic cof­fee machine con­sumes 1500 watts, and an elec­tric ket­tle even 2200 watts. And if you con­nect both of these devices to the fil­ter at the same time, it will already be over­loaded. The wash­er and dry­er use even more elec­tric­i­ty: the wash­ing machine is 2500 volts and the dry­er is 3000 watts, so they need to be plugged into sep­a­rate built-in wall out­lets.

If you con­nect net­work fil­ters one to anoth­er, then the load on them increas­es even more, there­fore, such use of net­work­ers is pro­hib­it­ed for safe­ty rea­sons. Not the last role for the qual­i­ty of the fil­ter is played by the mate­r­i­al from which it is made.

Experts do not rec­om­mend using fil­ters that are too old, if only because they become too brit­tle over time. Don’t buy surge pro­tec­tors that are too cheap or “name­less” and be sure to check for qual­i­ty assur­ance infor­ma­tion.

Elec­tric­i­ty prices are steadi­ly ris­ing. How­ev­er, any house­hold can save elec­tric­i­ty. For exam­ple, ener­gy costs can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced thanks to intel­li­gent RC surge pro­tec­tors. You will not only cut off the oxy­gen to the “wasters of elec­tric­i­ty”, but also raise the stan­dard of liv­ing. We will show you how to con­trol your home through a radio fil­ter and a cell phone.

Smart power supply

The clas­sic radio-con­trolled surge pro­tec­tors have been around for years, but the mod­ern ver­sion with Blue­tooth or WLAN is even more con­ve­nient, as it allows you to con­trol the inter­me­di­ate fil­ters sim­ply with a smart­phone that you always keep at hand, as opposed to a remote con­trol. Some radio-con­trolled fil­ters can be con­trolled even when away from home.

We will intro­duce you to wire­less tech­nol­o­gy and show you how to remote­ly con­trol even inex­pen­sive fil­ters and sock­ets via your mobile phone. In the table you will also find an overview of all the most pop­u­lar prod­ucts.

WLAN network filters: always and everywhere easily accessible

Wire­less fil­ters with WLAN con­trol capa­bil­i­ties have a great advan­tage over oth­er sim­i­lar devices, as they can be con­trolled even when you are away from home. This is use­ful, for exam­ple, if you remem­ber that you for­got to turn off the lights or the TV.

With a Wi-Fi con­nec­tion, even more advanced con­trols are pos­si­ble, such as the IFTTT web ser­vice, which is basi­cal­ly an automa­tion tool. For exam­ple, you can spec­i­fy that the plug should auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­nect as soon as your phone enters the home net­work, and then dis­con­nect again when you leave the house.

If you don’t want to make your own rules, you will find many so-called recipes (tem­plates) on the IFTTT page that you can eas­i­ly apply. Among oth­er things, you will find many tem­plates for Belkin WeMo Switch.

Bluetooth Surge Protector: A Cheaper Alternative

Wi-Fi fil­ters are real­ly very con­ve­nient, but they usu­al­ly cost more than 3000 rubles. If you are just look­ing for a radio con­trolled fil­ter that you can eas­i­ly use with your smart­phone, surge pro­tec­tors xavax with Blue­tooth would be a good alter­na­tive.

Although the radio range is not as high, and you have to do with­out remote access, how­ev­er, such fil­ters are cheap­er than net­work­ers with a WLAN con­nec­tion.

Classical radio-controlled socket with addition for mobile phones

The most inex­pen­sive ver­sion is the clas­sic RC fil­ter, which typ­i­cal­ly uses 433 MHz and can usu­al­ly only be con­trolled with a remote con­trol. Prices per piece are tempt­ing from 400 to 700 rubles. Thanks to the con­nec­tors that serve as an inter­face between the mobile phone and the radio-con­trolled fil­ter, you can con­ve­nient­ly con­trol these devices also with the smart­phone app.

Com­pared to Wi-Fi and Blue­tooth fil­ters, pur­chas­ing clas­sic RC net­work­ers is espe­cial­ly use­ful if you want to con­trol a large num­ber of devices. The cor­re­spond­ing starter kits are avail­able from e.g. Bren­nen­stuhl Bre­mat­ic Home, and also includes two com­pat­i­ble plugs. The price starts from about 5600 rubles. An addi­tion­al radio plug is avail­able for 1400 rubles for three pieces per pack.

Note: Pay atten­tion to the spec­i­fied max­i­mum pow­er for mains fil­ters. Typ­i­cal­ly, fil­ters are rat­ed at 1000–1500 watts, and most often this is enough. But if you want to con­nect mul­ti­ple devices to it, such as a com­put­er, TV, AV receiv­er, game con­sole, and oth­ers, you must use a fil­ter that can with­stand 3000W or more.

You should also be care­ful with kitchen appli­ances such as blenders, cof­fee mak­ers, and microwave ovens, which some­times require a lot of pow­er.

Advice: You can save ener­gy not only with smart surge pro­tec­tors. A huge waste of elec­tric­i­ty is, among oth­er things, old incan­des­cent lamps. If you are still using them, they should be replaced as soon as pos­si­ble — prefer­ably with LEDs. What types of LED lamps are there and how well they can work, you can find out from our reviews.

And if you want to equip your home with new equip­ment, the cor­re­spond­ing ener­gy label gives an indi­ca­tion of the sav­ings poten­tial. How­ev­er, this should not mis­lead you.

A pho­to: man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies, CHIP.de