Lan accessible devices can be amazing. Automatic on and off of various devices and removal of crap proprietary controllers and apps has made
many things much better.
Home Assistant running in Docker on a Synology 918 is easily the best tech I have every bought.
> Automatic on and off of various devices and removal of crap proprietary controllers and apps has made many things much better
Off-hand I'd think for things like a grill I'd want this to be handled at the power strip level. Normally a grill, like a weber grill, is just a piece of metal and will last until you wear it out (even then it's mostly the flimsy legs that fail). If you add internet connectivity, the expected lifetime value of a product goes way down: failing hardware, services that get shut down, protocols that stop working as expected.
Meanwhile at the power strip level, you can both monitor and enforce energy usage, something that's beneficial even if you remove the ability to control it remotely (and why would you!?). I'd imagine for most things but maybe my computer and media setup I'd prefer to be able to simply cut the power to ensure it's not running.
This is a meat thermometer with Bluetooth. It neither breaks your grill if it ever stops being supported nor does it talk directly to the internet (although the app might of course. but Bluetooth typically can be reverse engineered)
The annoying thing is that I can’t ever seem to find power strips with individually addressable outlets.
Not even being picky and sticking with an open protocol like ptpp but any kind of internet controllable power strip. All I can find are single outlets at ~$25 a piece.
I have had good success with TPlinks plugs. I use the single, the single with power monitoring and a multi plug with individually addressable outlets (not sure if it’s 4 or 6).
If you search on Amazon for wifi power strip there are several inexpensive options to choose from, starting at about $25 for a four outlet model with individually controllable outlets.
Presumably the grill temp itself is best addressed through the grill—you can mechanically attenuate gas very effectively and intuitively, plus you'd presumably be at the grill already.
Personally I use charcoal because I like flavor. :)
