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 Prime Wire & Cable Timer.  This is my favorite stye of timer to extend lighting for my animals or simply to have outdoor lights on until a set time after sundown.

Look I am a smart guy but one piece of tech that has always made me miserable are automatic timers.  They just seem needlessly complicated for some reason.  That is why I love this style of timer, it is dead simple.  Say you want your lights to come on at dusk and remain on for 4 hours, then shut off.

Okay plug this timer into the outlet, now plug in the device you want to run and turn it on.  Now push the set button, the device turns on.  Push it again, a light will show next to the 2hr mark, push again it shows up next to the 4 hour mark, stop.  In a few seconds the device will shut off that’s it!

And you can set the timer for anything from 2 to 12 hours or simply from “dusk till dawn”.  We use these for our ducks to extend laying in winter, I just set up two flood lights and say well if we are getting 8 hours of light and I want twelve okay, that is 4 extra hours.

Like most things I recommend, this one just works, and always works and is easy to use.  It is also frankly cheap, under 14 bucks with free shipping.  And yea it isn’t time yet but these are THE BEST for Christmas lights, no jacking around with dials, and times, just push a button, select your duration and walk away.

The ONLY downside is if your outlet loses power you do have to reset the timer.  Of course it only takes a second but if the outlet is part of a circuit with say a wall switch, you do have to remember to do it.

We also use these for exterior lighting, simply set up some outdoor lights and when you come home after dark you have a nice lit up front to your house, but the timer never forgets to turn them off later in the evening.  This can be simple, take a nice string of LED Christmas Lights (white of course so you don’t look like an idiot in June) and put them along the eave of a front or back porch.  Plug in a timer and you are good to go.

This way you always have enough light to see, it keeps would be burgles thinking well, someone is likely home and if you can work a staple gun, a button and plug in a extension cord you qualify to do this installation.

So check out the Prime Wire & Cable Timer and get the most basic form of automation helping out at your homestead.

Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com