How to Weatherproof your Outdoor Smart Plugs on the Cheap!
Here is a great project to work on this weekend! Taking inexpensive generic Wi-Fi Smart switches and waterproofing them with an extension cord case. NuVending.com sent over a nice holiday package for me to check out this month. Please note that all the gear was provided to me at no charge. These outlets are meant to be installed indoors. Please understand that you are not installing the plugs in their intended location and should be aware of the risks associated with that. If you are not comfortable with this, be sure to use properly rated Smart Plugs like the GE Outdoor Smart Switch.
The basic components of this project are :
- Nunet Smart Wi-Fi Plugs (https://amzn.to/2PAJuEw)
- Extension Cord Water Resistant Cover (https://amzn.to/2rD8YY9)
- 2 x 1 foot power extension cords (https://amzn.to/2ElgdLY)
This is a really easy project assuming you have decent 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi reception outside of your house where you would want to place these smart plugs. For me, it was the front of the house for the Holiday Lighting.
If you are not running Home Assistant, you can use these Smart Plugs with the Smart Life application. It’s a free download for IOS or Android. The App walks you through setting up the devices and then allows for some smart schedules, groupings and even power readings from it. The power readings were a really nice addition to the application.
The Smart Plugs are rated for only 10 AMPs and 1100W maximum power (according to the spec sheet) so I wouldn’t add too many things to them and in my application, I have just a few LED Christmas light strands attached to them. They were inexpensive enough that I used 4 of them to make sure the load was distributed across them all appropriately.
If you are a Home Assistant fan like me, you can use the Tuya Component to easily add these to your configuration. In fact, for my set up, it was just a few lines.
I do wish these plugs were UL certified and for us Home Assistant geeks, I do wish there was local control and you were not dependent on the cloud services. But for the price and limited Christmas season, I’m very happy with the outcome.
In the next video/post, I will walk through how I added these Tuya based switches to my Home Assistant Configuration for Grouping, schedules and inclusion of Alexa control. Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already.
Happy Automating!
– Carlo