FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

What I’m trying to find out is whether these smart plugs and lights will run without an internet connection once they are set up.

I have not looked at them yet but I have a number of years in IT. Pretty sure at a minimum you would need a router accessible for your Wi-Fi to be able to connect to. Normally you would not need an Internet connection but rather an Intranet which is just a fancy way of saying your internal network. The only viable reason I could see that they would need to be connected to the Internet is for updates. My grow light is Wi-fi connected and if my Internet is down my light still works.

andynorth wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 3:02 am I have not looked at them yet but I have a number of years in IT. Pretty sure at a minimum you would need a router accessible for your Wi-Fi to be able to connect to. Normally you would not need an Internet connection but rather an Intranet which is just a fancy way of saying your internal network. The only viable reason I could see that they would need to be connected to the Internet is for updates. My grow light is Wi-fi connected and if my Internet is down my light still works.

Yeah, I understand the inter/intra part...I was the first guy to bring the internet into our county back "in the day"...bbs, dial-up modems, even had a "Planet-Connect" connection via satellite dish for downloading mail and new files. Out-going mail relays were handled by the modems calling out to a server. That was in '93-'96. I finally got "bought out" by our local cable company when they started offering Internet...the lady was a friend of mine and I saw that my little board was a dying thing so I took the offer of "free internet" from her.<grin> Anyhow, those were DOS batch file days when you ran from the command line. Once things moved to Windoze I just fell in line and became a sheep following "DOS-Killer" Bill Gates offerings.

Oh, and the computer...a 386dx20 running 2/TWO MEGS of ram (I upgraded<grin>), it had a 65Mb (yeah, megabytes!) RLL (run length limited) hard drive, and both a 5.25" and a 3.5" floppy/diskette drive...high-tech!!!! Oh, and the monitor...a .31 dot pitch CRT!!! Oh, and no mouse...didn't need one. All of that for a little over two grand!!!! My how times have changed....

So much for a jog down memory lane! Anyhow, the plugs would have to have a micro-computer of some kind and be able to retain data (date, time, latitude) for them to work without an internet connection, wouldn't they? What I'm looking for is more than simple "on and off"...astronomical timers will follow the actual sunrise and sunset times.

I think I need more than smart plugs/timers for remote use. They make stand-alone switches that you set the latitude, date, and time on and they adjust automatically. These are usually intended to be mounted in switch/utility boxes into the wall. I was hoping some of these smart switches my have that same capability. Probably what I will do is buy one of the utility-box types of astro-switches, take a short, heavy extension cord cut in half, and attach the cut ends to the switch that is inserted in a freestanding box. It'll be portable and I can plug it into a nearby wall receptacle.

Panman wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 12:59 pm

Intheswamp wrote:Do these smart plugs require a constant Wi-Fi/ Internet connection or once you set them up through your phone do they run disconnected from the Internet?

Mine does require an internet connection for the timing. There are some that don't.

Thanks, Panman. That's the info I needed to know. I've thought about setting up a repeater to shoot our wifi signal out to the trailer but that's just another something to keep up and running. I think going with an astronomical timer, as I described to Andy above, will probably work ok for me. Since I'm pretty much all LED lights now, the amperage will be well within the astro-timer's handling capacity. Once I get it set up I'll put an amp meter on it and make sure. Of course, with this heat, I'm not going to be tinkering in the trailer any longer than I have to right now!

Thanks for the feedback!

ETA: Just saw your response about the computing power. That goes along with what I was wondering about.

Panman wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 2:00 pm

Intheswamp wrote: The only viable reason I could see that they would need to be connected to the Internet is for updates.

The smart switches don't have the computing capacity to calculate the sunrise/sunset times and must use internet connectivity for it. Additionally, at least in the case of Wyze, the app that allows you to configure, monitor, and set the schedules connects to the switch over the internet.

Lots of things seem to use the apps as a bridge between your local apparatus and a server sitting "out yonder". I know that several home security systems use that same design. We have a small Arlo security camera system which works fair. I only give it a "fair" rating because the video quality isn't good as I'd like due to the low internet speed we have here...which I found out after-the-fact. My sister lives in a large city with fast internet speeds and she uses an Arlo system and her video quality is very good...but she has cable modem speeds and I'm stuck at below 1.5Mbs upload here. The lower speeds cause the system to lower the rez, apparently.

Man, am I going off on some tangents or what this morning??!!!!!

wcrosman wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 1:41 am

Intheswamp wrote: ↑Thu Aug 24, 2023 10:38 pm Do these smart plugs require a constant Wi-Fi/ Internet connection or once you set them up through your phone do they run disconnected from the Internet? My setup where I keep my plants in the old trailer has no Internet connection, just cellphone service.

Depends on the device: wifi, bluetooth or zigbee.

zigbee?

Intheswamp wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 3:30 pm

wcrosman wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 1:41 am

Intheswamp wrote: ↑Thu Aug 24, 2023 10:38 pm Do these smart plugs require a constant Wi-Fi/ Internet connection or once you set them up through your phone do they run disconnected from the Internet? My setup where I keep my plants in the old trailer has no Internet connection, just cellphone service.

Depends on the device: wifi, bluetooth or zigbee.

zigbee?

Zigbee is a standards-based wireless technology developed to enable low-cost, low-power wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) and internet of things (IoT) networks. Zigbee is for low-data rate, low-power applications and is an open standard.

https://www.techtarget.com/iotagenda/de ... 20standard.

Intheswamp wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 1:57 pm

andynorth wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 3:02 am I have not looked at them yet but I have a number of years in IT. Pretty sure at a minimum you would need a router accessible for your Wi-Fi to be able to connect to. Normally you would not need an Internet connection but rather an Intranet which is just a fancy way of saying your internal network. The only viable reason I could see that they would need to be connected to the Internet is for updates. My grow light is Wi-fi connected and if my Internet is down my light still works.

Yeah, I understand the inter/intra part...I was the first guy to bring the internet into our county back "in the day"...bbs, dial-up modems, even had a "Planet-Connect" connection via satellite dish for downloading mail and new files. Out-going mail relays were handled by the modems calling out to a server. That was in '93-'96. I finally got "bought out" by our local cable company when they started offering Internet...the lady was a friend of mine and I saw that my little board was a dying thing so I took the offer of "free internet" from her.<grin> Anyhow, those were DOS batch file days when you ran from the command line. Once things moved to Windoze I just fell in line and became a sheep following "DOS-Killer" Bill Gates offerings.

Oh, and the computer...a 386dx20 running 2/TWO MEGS of ram (I upgraded<grin>), it had a 65Mb (yeah, megabytes!) RLL (run length limited) hard drive, and both a 5.25" and a 3.5" floppy/diskette drive...high-tech!!!! Oh, and the monitor...a .31 dot pitch CRT!!! Oh, and no mouse...didn't need one. All of that for a little over two grand!!!! My how times have changed....

So much for a jog down memory lane! Anyhow, the plugs would have to have a micro-computer of some kind and be able to retain data (date, time, latitude) for them to work without an internet connection, wouldn't they? What I'm looking for is more than simple "on and off"...astronomical timers will follow the actual sunrise and sunset times.

I think I need more than smart plugs/timers for remote use. They make stand-alone switches that you set the latitude, date, and time on and they adjust automatically. These are usually intended to be mounted in switch/utility boxes into the wall. I was hoping some of these smart switches my have that same capability. Probably what I will do is buy one of the utility-box types of astro-switches, take a short, heavy extension cord cut in half, and attach the cut ends to the switch that is inserted in a freestanding box. It'll be portable and I can plug it into a nearby wall receptacle.

That's quite funny. I started my IT business in 1998. Just at the start of the (edited)Y2K scare. I made more money percentage wise in those 2 years than any of my 22 years in business. Unfortunately my wife fell ill and I had to give it up in 2000. She recovered but I decided it would be to much work to restart it so now I punch a clock again.

I should have worded that differently. It seemed phony after the fact. I knew way too many people that thought the end of the world was coming. Sales people selling every type of survival gear they could sucker people into. I had tested several older systems, put them in to 2020 and my accounting software that I used as a test still worked.
However, my clients were all Small Businesses. I had a couple that refused to upgrade their servers and they rolled over OK. I guess it depended upon the systems that were being dealt with.

If the software was written with a four digit year, then there was a good chance that it would be ok. A lot of major systems were really old - old enough to have saved disk space by using only two digits for the year and assuming the '19'. That was when the fun began. You can't easily take a bank's or utility's masterfile that is accessed by hundreds if not thousands of programs and insert 2 digits in the middle. And if you screw it up, no one gets their money or their power. I spent many extra hours of 1999 trying to make sure the lights stayed on and the gas kept flowing on Long Island. I wouldn't call it phoney either.