I understand that this gadget may not mean a smarter house as such, a definition of smarter house would be a house that makes decisions or thinks or does tasks based on a given set of criteria, but a timer does bring about an event without any interaction from the owner of the house. That is what i meant by the term “relative smartness”.
Currently I live in a flat that has communal heating, and an electric heater is not required during a winter day. However, the children sleep in the largest room of the flat, where at night does get really cold. The reason for coldness is the fact that the room has huge windows on one side and my radiators are of the aluminium type – not cast iron, so they do not keep heat that well.
So the heater is plugged into this timer, while the timer is plugged into the outlet. I need this at the moment because i don’t have time to develop other systems that are required to make this controllable via computer or phone. The timer is set to what the time is now, and is set to on/off at times when one wants it to have the plugged in thing on/off.
I used to have a digital timer, it did work for some time (maybe a year or so) but then it just stopped. I left it unplugged hopping it would reset or something, but it never did (for a period of few months (a time it gets something lost in the huge wastefulness of my flat). It too was only relatively smart, since it wasn’t controllable via anything. I think this time the cheapness of this mechanical timer won.
I hope that eventually i will get time to instead use a 433MHz on/off switch, and control it via computer…
If you wish to buy a similar mechanical timer, and at the same time support my website (me) in my relentless pursuit towards making my home smarter, please purchase it on amazon using the following link:
Or search for other mechanical timer products here.