Etekcity Wireless Remote Control Electrical Outlet Switch – Item of the Day
Special Notice – Etek City has discontinued this item. It is too bad because Etek is a stellar company with a great reputation. That said if they don’t make it, then you can’t get it from them. The good news is I found a great product from a company called Syantek that works exactly the same and has passed my testing to where I can recommend it. So if you need a product like this check out the Syantek Remote Control Light Switch Kit.
Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.
Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is the Etekcity Wireless Remote Control Electrical Outlet Switch Kit. These things are just awesome and for under 30 bucks they provide a lot of convenience. The set comes with two remotes and 5 individual switches.
They are pretty intuitive but here is how they work. You plug one of these into an outlet, then you plug in what ever you want to control remotely into it, you just installed it, you are done. Now if it was unit one, when you push “on” for unit one, what ever is plugged into it comes on, when you push off, it goes off.
I know some of you are thinking, oh gee another gadget so people can sit on their ass and not even walk across the room to turn on a light. Now hold on, here are a few uses that make a lot of sense.
For one we have a floor lamp that is behind the couch, to get to it you have to walk around the back and contort yourself in an odd position to get to it. It isn’t a huge deal but it is a pain in the ass and it is also the best place for the lamp. Install one of these and no more contortionist activities to turn on the lamp.
When I first found these our grandson is too short to reach the wall switch in the bathroom, so I installed a small light, popped in one of these. No more, “I’m scared to go to the bathroom alone” stuff. Ended the excuse cold and he learned to see to his own needs. He also enjoyed using a remote to turn on lights.
I shoot videos at my desk and I have some pretty heavy lights that make the room work well for that. Say I want to shoot a video on the fly, push a button they come on, then off. Not a big deal but when it comes to my work with as much as I do I try to be as efficient as possible.
How about your annual Christmas lights? For us our tree is one of those pre lit jobs. Dorothy has some weird form of OCD around lights on Christmas trees, (okay honestly she is a Christmas tree Nazi, Really) that is unsettling. So I got a pre lit job to end it! After that she started building her annual “Christmas Forest” (seriously check out that link it is really cool). She has like 30 of those small tinsel trees she wire tied lights to and a bunch of other small trees. It really is beautiful but it is almost impossible to get to the wall and shut it off. Not with one of these, I just hit 2 and 3 when we go to bed and the forest is dark.
How about a shop with a light on the far end? Some of you likely have older parents with mobility problems, hey 30 bucks and make their life a little easier right? I put two cheap box fans in the roof of my back shop and can just turn them on for circulation in warm weather with a button push. I mean those cheap ass box fans that you can get for about 10 bucks BTW.
Okay you electric Nazis that hate phantom loss of electronics that are plugged in but not on. This can really add up, but if you put one of these in the connection and test it with a Kill a Watt, you will find they draw 1/10th of a watt in standby which is almost nothing. Over a year that would cost about 10 cents in electricity, where some devices can cost 20-30 dollars a year in “vampire draw” or even more. With that alone they can pay for themselves.
So if you have any lights or other electronic devices you would like to be able to turn on and off as easily as you do a TV, check out the Etekcity Wireless Remote Control Electrical Outlet Switch Kit today. I do use my nifty mechanical timers a lot too but sometimes on demand is what you really want.
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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.
Jack this is a great find.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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..
I find you can still plug in a typical electrical cord, just nothing over sized if one of these is in a dual outlet plug. That said for any situation like this, I keep a few of these around at all times.
https://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/aiotd-1-14-20
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!