Most of the electrical devices that we have at home we only connect them to the current when we are going to use them, except in some special cases in which they are always plugged in. One of these devices is, as a general rule, the router, which in fact tends to stay connected almost always, even when we are not at home. It would be great if these devices offered the possibility of being able to turn themselves off or on remotely by default, but thanks to this “trick” you will be able to do it without problems.
Whether for security or simply to save energy, you may prefer to have your router turned off when you are not at home. This makes all the sense in the world, since even if the router is not being used, it consumes energy if it is turned on (like all devices that have pilot lights on). It also makes a lot of sense for security, since the longer the router is connected, the more likely it is that any cybercriminal will attack it . For this reason, there is something that you can use if you want to be able to turn your router off or on remotely, although you will have to go through the checkout beforehand if you do not have one at home.
A smart plug to control your router
Well yes, as you can read just above, the way we have to be able to control our router remotely is by using a smart plug. In case you don’t know it or don’t know what it is for, these devices allow us to control and create routines for our devices , just by connecting them to these plugs. Actually, what we will be controlling will be the plug, which serves as an intermediary between the device that we are connecting to it and the electrical current in our house.
To give a simple example, imagine that you are normally away from home for a whole day. Thanks to the smart plug you can control your router and turn it off whenever you want. It is true that this would not help us to be able to turn it on remotely (since it needs Internet), but as we will see later, there are certain models that will allow us to do so.
The advantages of this type of smart plugs are not just being able to program them on or off. These devices also allow us to establish a maximum number of connection hours, as well as manually select when we want to turn a device off or on through an application that in most cases is compatible with both Android and iOS.
Smart plugs.
Some models on the market also allow us to keep a detailed electrical consumption of everything that we have connected to them. This is great, since through the mobile application we can track consumption in real time, which will allow us to know how much electricity a device uses when we are not at home from the palm of our hand.
Keep in mind that smart plugs need the Internet to work, so any plug would not do for it. However, there are some plugs like the one you can see below that do not need to have Internet for it. This is because they work through a SIM card , so we could connect the router to these and continue using it even if we cut power to the router.
