I want to schedule a space heater to turn on a couple of minutes before my wife wakes up and turn off in 20 minutes. I’ll be in the bedroom the whole time so it will be attended. We basically want the room to be warm upon waking up. I did some searching and only saw old posts about this being unsafe. Wondering if there are any new plugs that can handle this?
There are plenty of solutions for this simple problem.
The safety aspect is a couple of things:
- ensure nothing is draped over the heater before you turn it on. This is the hard one to do with any automation. Maybe with “AI” on cameras this could be done in the future. Of course that would then require a camera in the bedroom…
- ensure you have electrically the right capacity relay switch to handle the amperage of the heater. This one is easy. Many “appliance switches” are available in multiple technologies
- Is this a one shot project? Or to be part of a larger ecosystem of automated devices? This is the hardest to answer. If larger then pick your automation controller first, then your technical means of support of the appliance switch (ie: Z-Wave vs, Zigbee, vs. proprietary Wifi). Once those two choices are made, then your list of Appliance Switches to use is a shorter list.
If this is a One shot project, then there are proprietary smartphone apps that talk Wifi or bluetooth to matching appliance switches. But then your phone needs to be on the same network / proximity of the heater. That then starts to point on some of the benefits of a “real” control system that is always available to trigger automation tasks (ie: scheduled events like turning a heater on at 6AM during work days, and 8AM on weekends). Your phone does not then need to be present.
Location matters here as EU plug is different than US plug.
If you don’t want to bother with a smart solution, I use one of these Inkbird Heat Controllers:
https://www.amazon.com/Inkbird-Temperature-Controller-Thermostat-Sensor/dp/B01N464JQ8
You can set two different temperatures - one for day and night. It can handle heaters rated up to 13.5A or 1500W.
Govee has space heaters that you can set automations for without using a smart plug. There isn’t a lot of functionality in the automations, but you can program on/off times and it remembers the temperature settings from the last use.
Been doing this for several years in my house.
My home office is in the basement, gets cold in the winter. Immediately when motion is detected in the master bedroom in the morning (and it’s a weekday and the outdoor temperature is below a certain amount) the space heater will automatically kick on for 1 hour to warm the room up.
I also have a Zigbee switch setup right at my desk that I can hit to pop it on again for a 1 hour interval during the day if I want.