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[harrym1byt]

In my garage, I used to have my car one a daily battery charge using a time clock. Basically it gives the battery a quick boost once per day for 20 minutes, to keep it fully charged whilst it sits in the garage unused. My system worked well, until I decided to swap the time clock for a Alexa and a Smart Plug.

I set Alexa up to turn the SM on once per day at a set time, announce 'Charger On', then 20 minutes later turn it off and announce 'Charger Off'. Mostly it worked fine, except sometime it failed to switch yet still announced Charger on or off.

Is there a better way to ensure the correct switching takes place please? I would not want the charger left on indefinitely.

I appreciated my problem was a poor wifi signal out to my garage, so I have now improved that with a wifi repeater, none the less I would expect Alexa to work in controlling things better than '...point, shoot and just hope'.

 

[jwlv]

In my experience a cheapo smart plug is exactly what you pay for. I've had a few cheap ones before, and they do not perform as well as the big name brands. It might just be your smart plug that's not working consistently.

How are you certain that your smart plug is actually connecting to the Wifi repeater instead of the original router?

Most devices connect and stay connected to the first Wifi access point they see. They do not automatically reconnect to a better access point when the signal is better.

I now have 7 Google Wifi System access points and I found out the hard way that most of my devices still connect to the main access point, even if a closer access point is just a few feet away. I kept on adding access points thinking that it would extend my Wifi signal, when most of my devices just ignored the added access points.

Only newer devices, such as a current model iPhone or Samsung smartphone can automatically switch to a closer access point when a better signal is available. All of my other devices, such as Wemo plugs, Wyze cameras, Ring doorbell, Echo Show, Echo Dot, Fire TV, Tivo, etc. still connect to the main access point. It makes some of the other 6 access point redundant. Only a few of the "smarter" devices know that they should connect to them.