Comments

Etekcity Wireless Remote Control Electrical Outlet Switch – Item of the Day — 11 Comments

  1. My mom is disabled and we got her this. It made her life so much better. At night living alone if she became afraid over a noise, tripping over stuff in panic looking for a flash light or the switch (she can’t walk well), well just having the controller on her belt made her feel so much more secure. Oh and it works just as well when power goes off and you use solar or generator as backup.

  2. Another thought on this is it can give you a tactical advantage in a home invasion situation. Hook it up to a light in each room and turn them on. If the invaders didn’t head for the hills, it would be easier to locate the threat and take it out vs. using a flashlight and giving away your position and allowing concealment in the darkness for them.

  3. This is perfect for our family’s store! I was just thinking on Sunday about getting one that had the light switch toggle on it. It is a retail furniture store and I want to start turning on lamps on the end tables throughout the showroom for a more glowing atmosphere. Instead of buying multiples of them, I can get one remote for 5 outlets! Certainly cuts down on opening and closing time! Thanks for the post!

  4. I love my house in the woods however, this makes for a dark inside. My wife likes well lit rooms. Now she can turn on lights easily, this saved me pulling wire all weekend to put in wall switches. Happy wife = happy life 🙂
    Thanks.

  5. Jack,
    Gadget tester here, automation pro..
    I see these stated as 100ft range. I don’t see them as being able to be repeating devices though. How is the range in your experience?
    If range is an issue, you should look into Zwave devices. Each Zwave device can be used as an extender, extending the radio network. The one thing thats good about your units as they operating in the 433.92MHz ISM band and not the 2.4 band so they won’t congest your wireless network ( on 2.4) like Zwave can do.

    • All I can say is I have a remote in the living room and one in my office (it is nice that each set has two remotes) and I can turn off or on anything we have running on them from any place in our house.

      To be clear these are not networked devices, they are a very simple mechanical switch that runs via a remote control. There really isn’t any application I can think of where you would want them as “repeaters” because each of the five are on their own “channel”.

      That said they are all identical so if you did want to have say two that were both on channel one by buying two sets you can do that. Say to turn off or on everything in a room or something like that.

      To make my life easy I plug them in and find out which is which then write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on each one with a sharpie.

  6. Ah, they are on their own channel. Thats explains the difference between the two protocol platforms. When I am referring to repeaters, Zwave devices communicate on the same channel and work in a mesh network. In the same way you can extend your 802.11 wireless network with an extender, you can extend a Zwave network.
    Handy when you want to control devices outside the home. I control pool pumps, chicken lighting, etc..

  7. They work fine but the plug design covers up part of the other outlet so only a basic plug can be used there. Poor design in my opinion.

  8. These are awesome especially during Christmas time.

    I heard you say that they aren’t marked 1-5 to match the remote. Mine actually are. They all have a 4 digit number followed by a dash and another number 1-5 that corolate with the numbers on the remote. I’ve only had mine for just over a year so maybe the older ones didn’t have this.

    Thanks Jack!