SMARTZONE SMART PLUGS – SAFER, SMARTER, SIMPLER, SAVINGS 
Working from home. Kid’s driving you mad, too much to get done, and not enough time to do them? Have you ever wished that your home could do them for you? That your house would just run itself? Or even that you could save energy without having to run around the house every night to switch off all the power points?
Well, with Smartzone you can. You Smartzone System can make your wishes come true! The Smartzone smart plugs are the first easy step into home automation, and they will have you wondering how you ever got by without them.
Before we get into the great things you can do with them, you might be wondering what a Smart Plug is, and what makes them ‘Smart’?
WHAT MAKES SMARTZONE SMART PLUGS “SMART”?
A smart plug is like a plug adapter – it fits between your power socket and the appliance you wish to plug in. At its most basic level, it simply turns things on and off. But, when connected to a smart home platform, it becomes a very capable device.
They are considered ‘smart’ because they let you control your appliances using your Smartzone App on your phone from anywhere. Smartzone will let you set schedules for your smart plugs so you can turn appliances on and off at set times and on specific days.
Each Smartzone Smart Plug is also an energy meter and can tell you how much energy each appliance connected through it is using. This is an incredibly useful feature for the energy-conscious consumer and is communicated to you via the Smartzone App to help you save on energy use.
So how do you control them? The Smartzone System in your home comes Smart Enabled. It can communicate with the Smart Plugs, manage schedules and automation, and keeps everything under control.
HERE ARE 10 COOL THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH A SMART PLUG:
1: TURN YOUR HOME INTO A HAUNTED HOUSE:
Keeping the Kid’s occupied when at home for long periods can be daunting. Have some fun with them and create a knee-trembling creepy house, well, picture this:
Your family walks in the front door and all the lights go out. Then eerie waltz music starts playing from somewhere deep in the house. Next, the lounge room lamp turns on, but only for a minute, before switching off again.
The music cuts and there’s silence. A small floor heater turns on and blows hot air at their feet, then the TV turns on with maximum volume… If you haven’t scared them at this point, then they have a very steely nerve!
2: TAKE SOME STRESS OUT OF BEDTIME – AUTOMATE YOUR LIGHTS & APPLIANCES:
One of the most useful features of the Smartzone System is lighting automation using rules and schedules. We all turn on lights around the house every evening and often these are table or desk top lamps. Using Smartzone Smart Plugs you can completely automate this. Save on energy and know that the lights are off when you get to bed.
Or when working from the home office you might forget to switch off the desk lights and must get out of a warm bed to go down and switch them off.
Setting your lights to come on and off to a daily schedule is a great way to use Smart Plugs. With Smartzone Easy Scheduler you can set the times you want lights to turn on and off each day. This can be done by time, or by sunrise and sunset with our system using web-based data to adjust the schedule for summer and winter.
Every evening set the lights come on one hour before sunset and off again at say midnight when you are gone to bed. Adjust for weekdays and weekends. Set up night lights for the Kid’s so that these can be set to go off once they have fallen asleep.
Just remember to switch your lighting to energy efficient LED bulbs to maximise savings.
3: IDENTIFY ENERGY HUNGRY APPLIANCES AND UPGRADE TO SAVE: 
Have you ever wondered how much it really costs to run your home appliances? Or considered upgrading to more energy-efficient models, but feel unsure about which appliance will give you the biggest savings?
When you connect your appliance through a smart plug you can track how much electricity it consumes. If you don’t want to buy 10 smart plugs, you can always plug one an appliance at a time to a smart plug. You can then track how much each appliance consumes and you will know you exactly what’s using the most electricity.
With this knowledge, you will be able to decide, without a doubt, which appliance will shave the most of your energy bill if you replace it. You can also then select an appliance to keep attached to the smart plug, so you can switch it off when it’s not being used and cut down on its standby power consumption.
4: IDENTIFY AND ELIMINATE STANDBY ENERGY USE:
Standby energy usage is the power your electronic devices use when they are on standby. Standby or Phantom power can make up to 10% of your electricity bills. A Smart TV and Sky box left on standby each night can use as mush as €25 of energy per year.
Ok, so €25 on a single device seems like a small amount but this can scale quickly when you consider every appliance in the home that’s consuming energy when asleep. While a single device consumes very little in annual electricity use, when multiplied by several dozen products, you’re no longer talking about pocket change. This phantom energy use can account for as much as 10% of your annual electricity bill. What’s more, standby power use is roughly responsible for 1% of global CO2 emissions!
Some of the biggest standby power energy suckers are:
- Laptops and desktop computers
- Heaters and ACs
- Wi-Fi modems
- Printers and scanners
- TVs, Set-Top Boxes, DVD players and game consoles
- Phone chargers
- Microwaves, blenders and other kitchen appliances
When you connect your appliances to smart plugs, you can switch them off automatically using the Smartzone System and really save.
Set up energy saving rules:
- When I set the Alarm Away or I exit my geo-fence switch everything off. When I return home and enter my geo-fence or I dis-arm the system turn them all back on again.
- When I Arm Stay at night turn off all the lights and appliances downstairs and switch on the lights in the bedrooms.
Save energy and time automatically without having to think about it.
5: TRICK BURGLARS INTO THINKING SOMEONE’S HOME WHEN YOU ARE AWAY:
If you’re going out to work or just for a walk, or heading overseas for a holiday, you might want to create the illusion that you are home. You can do this by setting up a smart plug with a lamp near a window or in the front hall by the door.
All you have to do is connect your lamp to a smart plug and let Smartzone take care of the rest. Set schedules to turn lights on and off to give the impression you are home, and even use our cool holiday feature that will vary these on and off times daily by as much as 45 minutes so as not to look routine.
Set up a rule to turn on the lights if somebody rings your video doorbell or the motion sensor detects motion in the front garden. Having lights come on for 10 minutes like this is a great deterrent and will give a potential baddie pause for thought about coming into your home. It’s also very comforting to have lights on in the hall and at the front door before you get there.
Leave home relaxed knowing that Smartzone is helping your home look after itself.
6: AUTOMATE LIGHTING USING YOUR ALARM’S SENSORS:
Another really great feature of the Smartzone system is the ability to set simple rules that can turn on and off lights using door or window sensors. All the sensors on the Smartzone Security System are active all the time, not just when the system is armed away.
When you arrive home for example, set a rule that turns on the lights in the hall when you open your front door, or even better, set the lights to come on when you enter your geo-fence and have the lights on before you arrive home.
Letting the dog out the back for a quick run in the garden at night, then make the outside lights come on simply by opening the
7: OPTIMISE YOUR CHARGING STATIONS:
Your need to charge things quite often such as mobile phones, tablets, even the Kid’s games but not for 8 hours plus at a time. In fact, it’s bad for their batteries if they remain on charge for longer than necessary.
Batteries do not enjoy eternal life. Most smartphone manufacturers say their devices rate their batteries at 300-500 cycles. But, for many of us, it’s built into our routine to put our phone on the charger when we go to bed so that it’s fully charged and ready to go for the next day.
What we really need, is the ability to let our phone or tablet charge for 2 – 3 hours before the power is disconnected. A smart plug lets you do just this. By connecting your charger through a smart plug, you can run it on a schedule that automatically turns off the power at a set time. This could save you hundreds of dollars in new batteries (or thousands in new phones!) over time and eliminates the risk of fire due to faulty chargers.
8: LIMIT YOUR CHILDREN’S SCREEN TIME:
Tired of the weekday battle of getting your children to do their homework or to go outside for a while? That’s sure to have multiplied at this time when all the children are home because we are all at home right now.
Having trouble enforcing rules on how much TV can be watched, or how long the Xbox or play station can be played? Smart plugs can help you manage your children’s screen time and put into place a healthy home school and after-school routine.
Here’s a great example: Let your kid’s zone out and rest for half an hour when they first arrive home. Next, turn the power off to the TV set up for an hour or two, and make this ‘homework and outdoor playtime’.
Put the power back on for the hour before dinner so you have the headspace and quiet to get that sorted. Finally, make sure no one is getting up in the night to play games when they are meant to be sleeping – turn off the power when you go to bed.
The simple use of a smart plug on a schedule makes it easy to put a regular routine like this into practice!
9: START COOKING DINNER – WHILE YOU ARE AT WORK (IN THE OTHER ROOM)!
Do you have a slow cooker? Have you ever been frustrated by the odd length of time you might need to put it on for to cook your meal? 6 – 8 hours on low or 4 – 6 hours on high works in theory, but when you leave for work at 7am and get back at 6pm, a solid 11 hours will pass and your meal is going to be well over-done.
In the wonderful world of smart plugs, you can set a reminder in your phone to turn on your cooker at exactly the right time. This way, your meal will be perfectly stewed when you arrive home ravenous after a big day.
10: THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS. TIME TO GET STARTED.
What to get more control? Then Smart Plugs are perfect and give you more control than ever.
Or, if you just want to save energy, save money, and not have to worry about remembering which switches you turned on that day, you can let the Smartzone take care of that, while you get on with more important things for You and Your Family right now.
Smartzone – Safer, Smarter, Simpler Savings.
