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John Rumm John Rumm is offline
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Default What's available to remotely switch a power circuit?

On 15/05/2019 17:59, wrote:
On Wednesday, 15 May 2019 17:33:42 UTC+1, John Rumm wrote:
On 15/05/2019 13:47, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Wed, 15 May 2019 12:42:50 +0100, GB wrote:

On 15/05/2019 12:24, Chris Green wrote:
We want a set of sockets (powering mostly low power things like lamps,
PCs, phone chargers, etc.) which can be turned on/off remotely by
somrthing like a switch by the door. Thus one would be able to leave
the room and 'turn off' using a swithch at the door.

It doesn't need to be long range, just across a room and I'd really
prefer something mains powered rather than battery powered. We don't
want to have to select what to turn off either, it just needs an on/off
switch (with specific on and off positions, need to know it's off) to
turn off all of the sockets on the particular circuit.

The Quinetic 16A remote is the best I can find so far but it's not
quite guaranteed to maintain it's on/off positions. Is there not some
sort of remote control switch that would look and feel like a normal
light switch, always 'up for off/down for on' (in the UK)?



A switched spur exactly meets your needs, but you'd need to do quite a
lot of new wiring to install it.

I'm quite surprised to hear that Qinetic switches don't work 100%.

Conversely I am totally unsurprised. I wouldn't trust *any* consumer-
grade wireless equipment. WiFi, bluetooth, proprietary zappers. None has
been 100% reliable. I can see where the money goes on military kit, if
they have to be 100% reliable.


IME military kit is not necessarily any more reliable. All you can
usually hope for is it will work at a wider temperature range, and be
designed to let you hose the remains of the previous operator off it
with no ill effects!


Neither of those have any truth IME. And yes I did work with such kit.


So your experience is limited, who knew?

Perhaps I need a "tongue in cheek" flag?

(and the "hose off" bit on some projects is a rather grim and sad
reality - I recall one installation of several mil spec workstations in
the back of a 4 tonne army truck that would be expected to operate not
far behind a front line ans so was considered vulnerable to chemical and
biological attack. It was designed such that you could open the drain
gates, and apply a high pressure hose to the top of it. All the kit had
to be IP68 or better)

As to reliable, much depends on your definition of reliable. Yup its
physically robust, and built with high reliability components, but it
general is only slightly less likely (if at all) to have bugs than
commercial kit.

The software for it is developed, designed and documented to far higher
standards than commercial kit. And its well tested, and usually far more
maintainable. However it also suffers from a much smaller user base in
many cases, and often relies on tool chains that have a vastly smaller
user bases than more traditional desktop development tools. So it can
take longer to find and fix issues than in the commercial world.


--
Cheers,

John.

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