Smart Digital Programmable Outlet Timer, 7 Day Heavy Duty, with LCD Display for Lights Lamps, Set Up to 8 On/Off Programs for Plug in Electrical Outlets, 1 Pack

I have tried many different timers to control power to various devices (de-humidifiers, lights, etc.) and not been satisfied. Typical problems were unreliability, poor quality (did not last), and recovery from power outages. This product has solved all those issues. Build quality is very good. The digital programming was straight forward ... good instructions. Power switching is very reliable. Power outage recovery is excellent ... we experience frequent mini-power interruptions but the battery backup keeps the clock and programmed settings intact. And the 15A amp rating is high enough to control my devices. Everything I want in a power control timer.

I bought 3 of these timers to use for doing automated unattended backups on 3 computers. I plug the power brick of an external USB 3 hard drive into the timer. That way I can leave the external USB cable plugged into the computer all the time. I set the timer to turn on once a week for several hours. The computer will only see the external USB drive when the timer turns the USB drive on. Set your backup program to run a backup when the time turns on the external USB drive. I setup my automated backup program, (I am using the free Aomei Standard program), to run when the timer is on. You can pick any day and time you want to. Just make sure that the backup program and timer program are coordinated to run together. This timer appears to have non volatile memory so it will remember its settings if the power goes off for a while. You may also want to run the backup program manually the first time with the timer turned on manually to see how long your backup takes to run. Then you can adjust how long the timer needs to be on to run a complete backup. (I add 10 to 15 minutes before and after the backup elapsed time so that I can ensure that the backup will have enough time to run. Keep in mind that two clocks running NEVER keep track of time exactly the same.) Hackers cannot hack into the backup USB drive when it is not running. They will not even know that it exists if it is not on when the timer has the USB drive turned off. This will provide you with a secure backup copy that you can use to restore your system if you do get hacked. I was using a networked solution with networked USB drives but Microsoft eliminated "Network Neighborhood" with windows 10. That made my networked drives disappear. This is a more secure approach for automated backups and a lot cheaper than buying a new network addressable/accessible storage system (NAS) that is compatible with windows 10.

I HAD TO MODIFI THIS UNIT TO MAKE IT USABLE.MY GOAL WAS TO CONTROL HALLWAY TEMPERATURE DURING CERTAIN NEEDED TIMES.THE HALLWAY IN THE AFTERNOON IS USUALY WARM, BUT THE AIR CONDITIONER IS RUNNING AND THE WHOLE HOUSE FAN SHOULD NOT RUN.ALSO THE TIMER ON THE UNIT WAS OK BUT IT MIGHT START EARLY OR LATE DEPENDING ON OUR KNEEDS.SO I RAN THE UNIT THROUGH A WIFI REMOTE SWITCH.IN THE EVENING WHEN I FEEL IT IS TIME TO START THE WHOLE HOUSE FAN I TURN ON THE SWITCH AND BECAUSE TO TEMPERATURE IN THE UPPER HALL IS ABOVE 70 DEG. THE FAN STARTS AND WILL RUN UNTIL THE HALL IS 70 DEG OR LESS.THIS SYSTEM WORKS WELL FOR US AND PREVENTS THE AUTO TEMP ( WHOLE OUSE FAN ) TO START RUNNING DURING THE MIDLE OF THE DAY.

Very easy and intuitive to program. Waaay more programs avail than I need. This thing is really slick. I only need one program to turn this thing on and off a hamdful of times each day for a scheduled time period. Runs all week. You could really get fancy if you needed to with this thing. Very easy to override on/off/schedule with the push of a dedicated button. I use it to schedule a little circulating pump on for a few hours several times daily to circulate a tank instead of manually turning on or just letting it run all the time.

I cant say how much i like this timer. I've used the old school times with the pins to find out they fail or are very inaccurate n on/off cycles. This timer rocks. I can be tricky setting this up as the instructions dont fully detail how to set up for growing situations. I wanted 18 hrs on 6 hrs off. I quickly found You Tube videos to help with that. I bought another one and set it for 12 hrs on and 12 hrs off so now if i need to change my light schedule i just replace the timer with the appropriate one.

Never could get this timer to work. It was likely defective, but I also found the instructions not overly user friendly (i.e., I reset-up the timer multiple times, using different interpretations of the instructions). I waited too long to return the timer, throwing it out. I purchased another timer which was easy to program and that time worked!

WARNING: It is impossible to set the timers. Three college educated, with Master’s degrees, adults have followed instructions to set the timers—NONE of the three can achieve that goal. I can’t comment on their usefulness because the timers can’t be set to work. Too bad—they look nice.

The programming system took me about 10 minutes to figure out, and it's a huge unit. I wish that the plugs - either or both of them, rather than neither - were able to rotate. They look like they should, but it's more likely that the company that makes this just slaps in different plug types depending on what country they are selling them in.