Australia - Electrically Certified Hardware

Maybe Google “inductive loads vs resistive loads”

Here is the KP115

You can see the resistive load is 10A but motor load is 1.6A. This is one thing to consider. The small relays can only handle so much and could be the reason they are not lasting.

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I am well versed in resistive vs inductive loads. It makes no difference. Even for small constant loads like my server rack (500W) where I am power monitoring only (no switching). They are all garbage.

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No, I haven’t. I see they sell them at Bunnings. Might try one next time I go in.

They look similar to a bunch of Tuya plugs I’ve had which haven’t been particularly reliable either. I’ve ruled out anything Tuya anyway.

Funny enough I noticed they’re on clearance at Bunnings at the moment - if you can find one with stock they were only about $25. But almost no one has stock. Officeworks carries Hue also but again stock can be patchy.

The Hue line uses ZigBee so it runs locally, although they do have their own cloud server also.

Tuya is garbage unless you can get off the cloud. I set up Localtuya but I can’t work out how to block stuff from the cloud on my router, which is an essential part of the process.

Yeah I only use tuya zigbee stuff, and only after checking it out on the z2m github.

FYI Ikea also sell a Zigbee smart socket, and it’s quite affordable (about $30). I bought one and it broke after a month, replaced it and the replacement also broke after a month. Others have had good experiences with them but I wouldn’t bother.

I have had them fail across a variety of use cases now. All were power monitor only, always on (never switching). All failing at approx 2 years old mark.

2x tv electronics outlined in prior post (tv, game consoles etc)
1x washing machine
1x hue hub + raspberry pi
1x toaster oven
1x weather station base + homepod mini (like ~5w constant load…)

Not the biggest sample size of course, but my experience is suggesting it makes no difference what the load is. They fail at about the same age regardless, just trash quality.

Yes I’m salty about it, I’m annoyed about the kp115 in particular because it seemed like the more ‘not cheap junk’ option at the time I purchased them…

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Hi guys. So I want to get into wled and have looked up a few things but find the whole idea of getting led strips and the matching a controller and power supply to be a little confusing - still got more reading to go along with it, that’s for sure!

Does anyone have any suggestions on some good led strips, controllers and power supplies that they like getting for wled? I’d prefer something that requires as little soldering as possible since I’m not very good at it, but as long as it’s not 100% diy I wouldn’t mind putting something together.

Thanks in advanced!

How many LEDs (length and LEDs/m)?

There’s a new and quite simple controller from Quinled that comes with WLED pre installed.

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I’ve been using one for the pool pump since late February. Not crapped out yet but give it time. It’s not a power monitoring plug though, just switching.

I have LocalTuya as well but it doesn’t matter what localised option you use, you still need to have a cloud account. It’s a PITA, especially when something goes wrong.

I think for my first project I’d probably need about 1m strip, but I’m not sure how many led/m I should go for - do you have any recommendations? Also looks like the quinled full package come in a 4m version at minimum? Maybe I could get a controller through them instead of a full package?

$55 at my nearest Bunnings store.

There’s an AU bundle without the LED strip near the top of the list in the worldwide store.

That controller will power any density of LEDs if you are only using 1m.

Have a look at the tutorials on that website. There’s a good explanation of choosing LED’s /m.

So just checking it’s this one that you’re talking about? I’ll check it out! Also I’ll have a read of the website soon, but in the meantime will this work with any type of led strip or do I need to get certain ones?

Thanks for the suggestions!

Yes that one. A strip of WS2812B would be a good start.

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Hi @paul09 & @tom_l

Fair enough

I have 2 x KP115, 1 x KP105 & 3 x KP303 for over 2 years now. I hope my fate is not coming to an end soon.

Thanks for the heads up.

Have a look at CloudCutter. I used it on 2 of my arlec power switches with localTuya, before having a go at uploading ESPHome (ok, the LibreTiny fork). Seemed to do what it said on the box.
I have however hesitated to CloudCut my blind cover, since my motor seems to skip occasionally and LocalTuya doesn’t look to provide any ability to reset the upper and lower limits.

Does anyone have a photo of the board from a Kogan KASPEMHA smart plug ? I had one fail a few days ago and on pulling it apart to see if there was anything obvious to cause the failure I have found the transistor that drives the relay is a bit cooked.

The item is Q1 and I would like to replace it but cant identify the part due to the damage.

kogan#1b dead 12Jun23

Before you spend too much time replacing the transistor, have a look at the fuse on the other side. They have run one leg up the side of the case and wrapped the whole thing in heatshrink so the leg is pulled up against the other end of the fuse. I had four of them and in two the leg was pulled tightly enough against the fuse that it actually produced a short across it.

I suspect the actual risk is probably fairly low, but after seeing such a stupid flaw I decided I wasn’t comfortable using them in my house anymore.

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