Turn a wall outlet into a wireless charger with the Legrand Radiant | 19mm Momentary Push Button

The layout looks good too, but I’d recommend for version 2 that you increase the creepage distance between the HV and LV – particularly with regards to the LED. My own habit is to place an actual “border line” on the silkscreen. Nothing is allowed to span that line except for galvanically isolated components (isolated power supplies, opto-isolators, etc).

This seems to me that your experiment failed due to thermal failure cased by insufficient cooling and not the part itself..You stated yourself that the part failed due to thermal expansion (insufficient cooling). But it’s still a valid experiment with valid results. And you show that it’s up to the designer (or designers) to design the entire product, which includes sufficient cooling. This is one area where home designs fail – a lot.

Best answer: Probably. The Amazon Smart Plug was designed to work with most any product you have in your home but there are some exceptions and devices that shouldn’t be connected.

AC is safer than DC. You can let go of two AC terminals but not DC as DC keeps your muscles clenched. AC doesn’t.

MOVs tend to degrade gradually after a large surge or multiple small surges. This degradation leads to increasing MOV leakage current; in turn, this raises the MOV’s temperature, even under normal conditions such as a 120-V ac or 240-V ac operating voltage. A thermal disconnect adjacent to the MOV (Fig. 4) can be used to sense the increase in MOV temperature while it continues to degrade to its end-of-life condition. At this point, the thermal disconnect will open the circuit, removing the degraded MOV from the circuit and thus preventing potential catastrophic failure.

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I don’t know who all of you people are, but stop being ridiculous. This guy made an ESP8266-based TRIAC switch, and gave the design away for free. He has ample warnings on his web page about this project. I encourage anyone who wants to use this design to research the subject thoroughly to make sure they understand what they’re doing.

I think a lot of the negativity is par for the course on Hackaday when dealing with HV (or other areas with safety concerns) projects. I got my share of the same thing with my “Quick 220 clone” project. Such projects should garner a healthy dose of paranoia, but I think where it goes wrong is when that converts into unfriendly skepticism – that somehow it’s impossible for an amateur working alone to build something that would pass muster with UL or CE.

If you’re invested in the Alexa ecosystem, the Amazon Smart Plug is super reliable, dead simple to set up, and works with most electrical products you would find in the home. Be sure to heed the warnings found in the in-box manual!

I suppose if you want, you can stick your fingers into the toaster slot to touch the exposed element and push down the slider or try to make toast while taking a bath. Otherwise, you are not making any contacts with the high voltage.

My first job in the trades was as an electrician’s apprentice doing tasks, such as pulling wire, building light fixtures, and moving scaffolding in grocery store renovations. I moved into HVACR and now serve as an HVACR contractor, instructor, and electrician.

Creating a PCB heat bed isn’t an art – it’s a science. There are equations and variables to calculate, possibly some empirical measurements by measuring the resistance of a trace, but Ohm’s Law is a law for a reason. If you do things right, you can make a PCB heat bed perfectly suited for the task. You can even design in safety features like overcurrent protection and fuses. It can’t be that hard. After all, your house is full of devices that are plugged into the wall.