Lifekludger correspondant Dave Faxon sent in this report on some mods he’s been doing on remote control access of power outlets.
Dave first came to my attention when we were talking about the USB PowerBar when he, amongst many others, contacted me, everyone seeking such a device that has control of power outlets via USB. We never did get a satisfactory outcome to those enquiries so Dave has found a different kludge. He reports below.
If anyone else has a mod, kludge or hack they’d like report on through the Lifekludger blog, please send me an email. See the contact page.
SuperSwitch
Remote power control times three!
Listed under Hardware + Home Improvement not electronics.
Made in China by Blackstone International LTD model number AHR003 – 120 VAC American model.
Price = 20 USD plus s/h. or 14.95 for the 2 remote package.
—
The package came with 3 remote plug-in boxes with one outlet on each and a small transmitter which toggle on/off state of each remote.
Each remote unit although rated at 8 amps has a 15 amp relay inside controlled by an old style circuit board radio receiver IC chip not unlike a garage door opener unit. Remotes are well suited for small to medium power appliances up to 800 watts. The remote units have no transformer inside and seem to derive lower operating voltage thru a 2.0 microfarad AC capacitor and some diodes on the circuit board which in theory would make it easy to hack them to 220 volts by swapping out the capacitor with a 1.0 microfarad 220 VAC.
Transmitter will work any remote up to 60 feet away and since it uses radio waves and not IR you won’t have to be in a line of sight.
Now if they would just make one with more than one channel so that I could
have 2 or more sets…
Dave Faxon
Technorati Tags: powerswitch, power, correspondant, remote, dave faxon, power control
I just bought two 2-paks of superswitches at Costco, and I wanted them to be interoperable, but it turns out that the remote for one set will not operate the other set. The set that costco sells only operates two outlets not three so this might be a different set, but you might find that there are multiple channels. I was actually browsing trying to find a way to rekey my remote so it operates a different set.
Another thing to notice about these: there are stickers on the remotes and outlet switches with a code that I presume is the control sequence. One of my sets has code H5563, and the other set has code H5885. So presumably if you find another set with different code, it would operate independently.
Gday Tom. Thanks for the coment.
I live i Australia and not only don’t we have Costco but we don’t have devices like the Super Switch. I checked it ou ton Amazon, looks great. (http://is.gd/c5kT)
Hope you have some luck what you’re trying to do. Are these RF remotes or IR?
Dave