I’d recently made a post regarding the Ikea Inspelning plug in a thread where someone was looking for an always-on current monitor (no relay.) I found that those devices worked well, if you were willing to do a modification to the unit.
Ikea decided to drop ZigBee for some reason in favor of Matter, and with that, new devices. The replacement for the Inspelning is the Grillplats, a similar smart plug that has a Matter transceiver instead of a ZigBee unit. It’s a bit smaller, more packed in, and a little harder to get apart, but it can be modified to be always-on just as easily.
I’ve done a complete writeup regarding this unit on a personal project page with plenty of pictures. As always, there are lethal voltages inside these devices when operating, and you can cause death and property damage by improperly modifying units. If you don’t know how, don’t do it.
They can also turn on and off, which means if you’ve connected something that relies on being powered on all the time, having an accidental trip that shuts it off could be problematic. My modification is to make the device permanently on… I want a power monitor, not a remote plug.
Fwiw with sample size of 1, I found idle power consumption while on was 0.5W.
I measured with one US grillplats plugged into a 2nd US grillplats plugged into a nightlight (~3W power draw). Over 297397 seconds (~3.5 days) the 1st plug showed 284 Wh used, the 2nd showed 240 Wh used, meaning the 2nd plug used 284-240 = 44Wh. Then 44Wh / 3.5 days = 0.5W idle power consumption. Of course I don’t know how accurate these plug energy measurements are, but seems safe to say it consumes <1W.
Im wondering why they aren’t used as thread router instead they only seem to be used as end devices?
I wonder why ikea made that choice for an always powered device…?
The alpstuga air quality monitor is used as a thread router.
I think the plug should be used as one as well
AFAIK the motor Rating of 300W relates to the relay being able to only SWITCH loads up to 300W. So as long as you run a device with a higher motor power consumption without switching it off/on, you should be fine.
At least an electrician told me. I’m using it for a washing machine with a lot higher Motor consumption just to monitor energy consumption. But i would never switch it on or off while the machine is running.
This is an interesting point, can anyone with electrical expertise comment?
I'm cautious by nature, so would like b to be sure of this. My concern is starting the motor might still exceed the rating of the plug even if it is not being switched on by the plug itself. I mean, for a washing machine the motor would generally not be started right away anyway so it seems fishy.
I'd also like to know how this would play on heavier appliances just for energy monitoring. I'd likely disable the switching all together in home assistant. Then use the energy monitoring on things like clothes washer/dishwasher to determine once the cycle is completed and get notifications. Monitoring fridges and water sumps might also prove useful.
