Best smart light switches and wall outlet sockets dimmer for home

Compared with mechanical wall switches, smart light switches are safer to use, feature many functions, and have more beautiful styles. Breaking the single function of the traditional wall switch on and off, in addition to the functional innovation, it also gives the switch decoration effect. Smart switches are widely used in many fields such as home intelligent transformation, office intelligent transformation, industrial intelligent transformation, agriculture, forestry, fishery and animal husbandry intelligent transformation, etc., which greatly saves energy, improves generation efficiency and reduces operating costs. Achieved a smart world.

Below, we'll walk you through the key considerations you need to make before ripping those light switches off your walls. Then we'll tell you which smart light switches and wall outlet sockets dimmer we think are worth your money we think are worth your money.

From a technical point of view, the smart light switches categories are:

1. Power line carrier control: power line is used to transmit signals. The switch needs to be equipped with an encoder, which will be interfered by power line clutter, which will make the work very unstable and often cause the light switch with led indicator to lose control. Advantages: cheap and easy to accept.

2. Radio frequency control: It uses radio frequency to transmit signals. The switch is often interfered by radio waves, which makes its frequency stable and easy to lose control. The operation is very cumbersome and the price is high. This type of switch needs to add a neutral line to To achieve the effect of multi-control and mutual control. Advantages: The price is cheap and easy to accept by the public.

3. Control bus: the field bus is used to transmit signals, and the bus panels are connected through the field bus to realize the communication and control signal transmission. Its stability and anti-interference ability are relatively strong. The earliest bus adopts a centralized bus structure to transfer all The wires are concentrated on a central control gateway or controller, and then the signal wires are distributed from this position to the position of each switch. This brings about poor wiring system safety, and the central controller is paralyzed, which will affect the entire operation. The advantages of the distributed field bus system: good safety, no failure of one point will affect the operation of other points, strong stability and anti-interference ability, the signal is transmitted through a special signal line to achieve mutual communication between switches . But the traditional wiring method needs to be changed. The smart usb outlet panel at each position can realize multiple functions such as multi-point control, master control, group control, and point-to-point control.

4. Single live wire control: It is a wireless communication similar to GSM technology, with built-in transmitting and receiving modules, single live wire input, and the wiring method is the same as that of a traditional switch, which is easy to install. Disadvantages: unable to achieve network control switch operation.

Smart light switches: Things to consider

You may have a bunch of smart lights in your home already, in which case you're probably wondering why you'd want to install a smart switch when you can already control everything through Alexa/Google Assistant/your smartphone. It's a fair question, and in some cases, that will be enough.

But smart light switches give you smart control over "dumb" lights already in your home; not only can you switch them on or off from thousand of miles away, you can also adjust the brightness and, in some cases, colour. If you have any lighting fixtures in your home that are incompatible with smart bulbs, a smart switch is your answer.

Our advice is to do a cost-benefit analysis. Wiring your home with smart light switches can be a pricey endeavour, especially with larger homes. But then, the cost of installing smart bulbs and smart plugs all over your crib may cost more in the long run. Do the maths.

Okay, this one's key. First of all, we're going to be covering US and UK smart switches and surface mounted wall sockets in the list below, but that means some vital differences in how they're wired and how they work. All aforementioned considerations apply to both, but when reading our recommendations, just be aware that wiring and models are going to vary depending on which side of the pond you're on.

The main point of confusion lies in the multiway switching, which allows you to control certain lights in your home from more than one location. In the US, a three-way switch is what allows you to control lights (or anything else, like a ceiling fan) from two locations, while in the UK this is called a two-way switch. To confuse matters even more, having more than two control locations for a light in the US is called a four-way switch, but an intermediate switch in the UK. You'll need to think about what you have before replacing it, so make sure the new switch does what you want it to. Knowing the lingo is half the battle.

You also want to make sure your existing lights are compatible with any smart switch you're installing. You'll usually find that information on the company website.