I was watching a video about smart home setup when I realised that even if I switch off the device from my phone, it will still consume the power then whats the benefit besides you dont have to getbup from your couch to do it manually. Am I right or IoT things work differently.
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These devices power themselves down partly. They still need to be working to receive a command to turn on again. Buttons on them are usually microswitches that bridge two contacts and then rebound to an off position, which gives a working logic element a command. To turn something on an off fully using a switch, it has to stick to one of two positions like the black rockers labelled “I / O” on the back of computers.
Another way how a small device can turn a bigger one off is a relay, where it energizes an electromagnet that moves to connect a switch, then everything behind the this switch can be fully off. You can hear it with big appliances like fridges. But the part with the relay has to remain powered on and waiting.
The power consumed by modern smart plugs and similar devices is very miniscule. The one I use at my desk consumes less than the 1 watt minimum value on my power meter.
> whats the benefit besides you dont have to getbup from your couch to do it manually
That’s the benefit. It’s not even necessarily that you can do it manually by *remote* – you can tie the room lighting brightness to time of day so you don’t [[BIDEN BLAST]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9FFQNY29Bc) your eyeballs with the 3000 lumen dining room luminaire when you shuffle off to piss at 3AM, and handle turning them on and off with motion sensors, door opening sensors or even [millimeter wave radar](https://www.aqara.com/en/product/presence-sensor-fp2/).
Smart bulbs also tend to double as radio relays for zigbee protocol and other smarthome mesh systems – even when not lit up, they perform a useful function to the system.
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They do consume a tiny amount of power when turned off, yes. But the modern microelectronics used in these devices is very power efficient so they hardly uses any power at all. The same electronics also comes in other devices with batteries such as remote controllers to act as switches or sensors. And they usually come with tiny button cell batteries that last for months. So the power draw from a powered off light bulb is not going to be noticeable. It is only when you turn on the light that they consume their full power.
Water analogies work really well for understanding power usage.
A light bulb is like a water hose in terms of electrical usage. Lots of gallons per minute are flowing into that bulb to keep it lit.
The part of the smart bulb that is controlling it is more like a tiny tube the size of a human hair. A minuscule amount of water is needed to keep it going, but it does take water.
The bulb in its off state might take 15 years or longer to consume as much energy as the bulb in its on state consumes. So if it means the bulb is off for even an extra minute, it “pays” for months of those smart parts being in the bulb.
Convenience is the primary benefit. For example, my bedroom light is on a smart switch. I can have the light on when I get into bed, then just tell my smart assistant to turn it off. Of course I could just put a lamp next to my bed, but I find the Smart switch to be easier. I also use the Smart switch to automatically turn on my lights in the morning when my alarm goes off to make it easier to wake up.
Some people use Smart switches to turn the lights on and off in the house while they are out of town to make it look like they are still home.
While the devices do you use some power even when they’re turned off, this is a very tiny amount, and is almost certainly offset by reducing the amount of time the lights are actually on. I’m sure we’ve all been in a situation where you sit down to do something and realize you left a light on in another room. Some people will get up right away and go turn it off, but people aren’t inherently lazy. If you can turn the light off by just asking your smart assistant that people are more likely to do it. Having that light bulb run for a few minutes last each week we’ll save more power than the device is consuming.
Okay, imagine a smart home bulb or device is like a TV that’s turned off but still plugged into the wall. Even though the TV screen is dark and it looks like it’s not using power, there’s a little bit of electricity that it needs to stay ready to turn on when you want it to.
Smart bulbs and devices are kind of like that. Even when you turn them off with your phone or voice, they still need a tiny bit of power to stay connected to your Wi-Fi network and listen for your commands. This way, they can quickly turn back on when you tell them to, without you having to wait for them to start up like a regular bulb or device.
So yes, they use a little bit of power when “off,” but it’s pretty small compared to when they’re fully on and doing their job.
Not really. They work just like your TV. And your phone. They enter into a very low power mode awaiting a command. Your TV to switch it on, your phone to “listen” for phone/text et al, your light bulb to switch on.
maybe more simply they go into “standby” mode.
No worse than your TV on standby.
They use fractions of a watt and just check in often enough to see if there’s anything they need to respond to.
Low power wifi, Bluetooth LTE, etc. consume almost nothing.
For reference, if it uses even 1W of power, you’d need to have it on for 1000 hours (41.7 days) straight for it to use even a single unit of electricity (KWh, about 10-20c in the US at the moment).
Say you had ten such devices, it’d barely cost you a dollar a month to have them all on 24/7.
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