In an age where we are becoming more concerned about our use of energy and electricity, people have started to develop smart plugs that can perform more tasks.
You attach smart plugs to a regular outlet, and you are then able to control that outlet through an app or program.
Oftentimes you can even control functionality through popular voice assistants such as Alexa and Google, leading many people to believe smart plugs need to be connected to WiFi.
To put it simply, smart plugs do need WiFi to function properly. Without a network connection, you lose a lot of its capabilities. However, there are alternatives to WiFi smart plugs, called Z-Wave and Zigbee smart plugs, that can be used without a WiFi connection.
However, it isn’t always that straightforward in all cases.
There are ways to control your smart plug without a direct Wi-Fi connection, but it becomes more complicated.
Smart plugs were designed to be connected to WiFi, and as you keep reading the rest of this article, I will go more into detail about the logistics behind smart plugs and a WiFi connection.
Do Smart Plugs Use WiFi?
So, as we’ve just mentioned, smart plugs were intended to be used with a direct WiFi connection in order to operate properly.
At first, many people may confuse a smart plug for a weird type of extension outlet because all you physically need to do is put one in a regular outlet.
This leaves them wondering how exactly smart plugs connect to Wi-Fi.
It’s very simple and straightforward:
- Plug your smart plug in the outlet that you want
- Install an app/program on your chosen device to connect to your smart plug
- Your smart plug will be able to communicate with your device through WiFi
- Wirelessly control the item attached to your smart plug
If you couldn’t guess, because your smart plug needs to be connected to your phone through a WiFi connection, this means that your phone has to have a strong, stable connection in order to make sure that you can communicate to your smart plug.
The physical installation process is pretty simple; the only part that may cause some people trouble is downloading the correct application to control your device.
The app that you download can differ depending on your phone and smart plug.
Some smart plugs have their own native apps that are designed to work their own devices exclusively, while others may have different types of programs.
When you purchase a smart plug, it should give you instructions for which app you need to download and how to connect the smart plug to the WiFi network.
Controlling Your Smart Plug With WiFi
Once you’ve completed that process, you can begin to control your smart plugs with your WiFi.
The way it works is that your phone will act as an interface between your smart plug and whatever device you decide to connect it to, and you’ll be able to decide how you want your devices to be set up.
Simply put, your phone will act as a controller for your smart plug, and you’ll be able to do different things depending on:
- The type of smart plug that you have
- The corresponding app you have to control it
- The type of device that you are connecting to the smart plug
The biggest factor out of these will most likely be the type of device you connect to your smart plug.
Once you buy a smart plug, there’s really nothing that you can directly do to change its functionality.
The same point applies to your app: once you’ve bought a specific smart plug, there is usually only one app that you can use.
All that’s left to consider is the type of device that you’re connecting as the only main factor you can change.
Different devices have different capabilities when you control them wirelessly through WiFi, and some devices have more features than others.
The most basic feature that should work on almost all devices is the ability to turn your device on or off remotely by using your WiFi connection.
This allows you not to have to be at that spot or unplug your device to turn it off.
Most devices can even take this a step further by allowing you to automate when it turns on/off.
Other Smart Plug WiFi Capabilities
The ability to turn your device on or off remotely is only a basic feature of the many you can perform on a smart plug device through WiFi.
There are many more that you can do, and as we’ve said, it will depend on the type of device to which you’re trying to connect.
It probably turns out that you already have a good idea of what your device can do if you’re planning on using a smart plug, but there are still other features about which many people may be unaware.
There are other more basic features, such as the ability for you to monitor the energy usage of your smart plug for whatever purpose.
Some smart plugs even allow you to gauge the temperature of the actual wall outlet to make sure that it doesn’t overheat.
These more basic features will have different levels of practicality for different people.
Still, one of the biggest features some smart plugs have is the ability to be controlled with a voice assistant.
Due to the rise in software and AI, the capabilities of many voice assistants such as Alexa, Google, and Siri have greatly improved, and that has translated to smart plugs.
Nowadays, many smart plugs can be used in tandem with these assistants, which greatly increases the plug’s functionality.
The convenience of these voice assistants, along with their actual features, makes combining them with smart plugs all the more appealing.
People will often integrate their smart plugs with voice assistants because they either already have or are planning to create a smart home network.
As you might know, a smart home is a house that’s filled with various devices that can be controlled electronically, usually through WiFi.
Because smart plugs use WiFi, they can easily be integrated into a smart home network, and they’re often connected to work with other devices.
Do Smart Plugs Require WiFi?
You should now have a good understanding of how smart plugs use WiFi, but you may be wondering if WiFi is needed in the first place.
As I’ve mentioned, smart plugs don’t technically need WiFi to operate, but they’re designed to be connected to WiFi, and they work the best that way.
But what if you don’t have a stable enough connection? Or, what if you simply don’t want to use WiFi?
Smart plugs don’t require WiFi, but it’s highly recommended that you connect to WiFi. If you don’t connect your smart plugs to WiFi, but you still want the full set of features and capabilities, you’re going to need to take extra steps and get other devices in order to do so.
Your smart plug can still function perfectly fine, but it basically just becomes a normal outlet, which causes some people to view it as pointless.
One of the biggest drawbacks to not using WiFi for your smart plugs is that you’ll lose the capability to use voice assistants to control your devices, which can be a very big benefit for some people.
It may be the case that your connection is strong enough to handle smart plugs consistently, or you may have a WiFi connection that simply cuts off every so often.
Whatever the case may be, there are ways to work around this problem, and it involves getting other devices to make up for that lack of WiFi connection.
Other Devices
If you want your smart plug to operate without a direct WiFi connection, you’re going to need other devices that will serve as the connection point between your devices and your phone.
These other devices will need to have some sort of network connection.
If you have no connection at all, it will be impossible for you to take advantage of smart plugs.
This is an important factor to keep in mind, but that shouldn’t be a problem in today’s world.
The devices in question that you’ll need to make sure your smart plugs can be used are a smart home hub and either a Z-wave or Zigbee smart plug.
A smart home hub is a central access point for all the various smart devices you have, creating the smart home network.
If your smart plug doesn’t connect directly to WiFi, you need to have this device so that it can find a way to somehow connect to you.
A Z-wave and Zigbee smart plug is a type of smart plug that we’ll discuss next.
Z-Wave and Zigbee Smart Plugs
Z-wave and Zigbee are a type of protocol that smart plugs use in order to communicate to the smart home hub.
It doesn’t use WiFi or traditional network signals to connect, which is why it’s technically possible to use your smart plugs without WiFi in the first place.
Instead, these tools use low-power radio waves to communicate.
Many different smart plugs can use these protocols, so you want to determine if your smart plug follows one of these two protocols if you plan to use them without connecting to WiFi.
Also, you want to make sure that you already have a good home network in place to make sure that the integration is smooth, and you want to plan out how you want to implement your smart plugs beforehand.
These protocols combined with the smart home hub allow you to essentially create your own private network of smart devices. It works because the smart home hub acts as the cloud equivalent when you issue commands.
If your smart plugs were connected to the WiFi, they would access a universal cloud remotely through help from the voice assistants, but you act as your own cloud when you use a smart home hub.
Benefits of Non-WiFi Smart Plugs
Just to emphasize the point again, smart plugs were intended to be used with a direct WiFi connection, and you’ll have to use WiFi in order to access all of its intended capabilities.
However, there are some inherent benefits if you decide to use smart plugs on a smart home hub network, mainly stemming from the fact that you’re not connected to the external internet.
The main pros of smart plugs without WiFi are:
- You’re no longer vulnerable to external hacks
- You have more custom control over the operation of your devices
- You can control your devices without relying on the internet to be available
- You can allow different brand smart devices to work together
For many, the biggest positive will be the fact you’re entirely protected from outside hacks.
This is because you’re not connected to the internet, so it wouldn’t be possible for anyone to hack you externally.
A lot of people value privacy and security, and the fact that smart home hubs completely guarantee hacking protection is enough for many people to consider using them.
This also means that you don’t need to rely on a connection to the internet in order to control your devices.
In this case, you don’t have to worry about suddenly losing connection or having to maintain a stable connection all the time.
This can be great for remote areas where it may be hard to get a good internet connection in the first place.
Lastly, since you would be using a private network, you could have more custom control of the functionality of your different smart devices.
In some cases, you can even perform more complex automation and control to the various devices on your network.
What’s great about this is that you could potentially allow different brands of devices to work together. That wouldn’t be possible if you would have put it on a WiFi connection.
The Benefits of WiFi For Smart Plugs
Now that you understand smart plugs’ reliance on a WiFi connection and how smart plugs operate with or without WiFi, we can now talk about the benefits of using smart plugs with a WiFi connection and their general appeals as a whole.
In most cases, people are planning to use smart plugs with WiFi, so it’s a good idea to understand what you can do with them.
Home Device Automation
The biggest use for WiFi smart plugs is to wirelessly automate your home devices to do certain tasks, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Many people purchase smart plugs to add an extra layer of control on otherwise relatively primitive devices, and people use them differently in different situations.
For example, many people use smart plugs to simply have the ability to turn their devices on or off remotely.
However, some people take this a step further by limiting how long certain devices can be on, such as a TV or small oven.
This could be great for parents who would want to limit the time their kids spend on TV, or maybe if someone needs to keep a light on for only a certain amount of time.
This idea of creating limits for your devices can be taken even further by creating entire schedules for your devices, and their schedules can be created to work in tandem with other devices.
This is ultimately done to achieve the most proficient smart home network that works for you, but you don’t have to create it on a large scale.
What’s great about WiFi smart plugs is that you can purchase and use them individually if you don’t want to create an entire network of smart devices.
Each one will work the same, and it can work independently or with another smart plug.
You also have the ability to use one outlet to control many devices by simply pulling them out and replacing them, or you can move the smart plug to another outlet entirely.
Wireless Control
Another big appeal to WiFi smart plugs is the fact that you can essentially control your smart plug devices from anywhere as long as you’re connected to the internet.
In many cases, you’re going to be at home when you interact with your devices, but the fact that you could control your devices from outside the house provides many conveniences.
For example, this would be a really great feature when you’re going out for vacation, work, or any other situation in general.
If you want certain things to be done in your home but you have to be out, you always have the ability to control your devices.
This is also great for when you forget things while you’re out of the house, like when you accidentally left something on when it should be off.
Do You Need WiFi For Smart Plugs? Final thoughts
WiFi smart plugs are a great showcase to show what you can do with the combination of technology and software, and using a WiFi connection will ensure that your smart plug will be as functional as it was intended to be.
Wireless control adds a lot of convenience and flexibility to the control of your devices, and this kind of functionality is only possible if you connect your smart plugs to WiFi directly.