7 Smart devices you don't want to be without.

The first real smart device was introduced to the market in 1994.

That's when it all began.

Today I would dare say there isn't a home without at least 1 smart device.

Weather it be a phone, alexa, coffee machine or EV charger, there are endless devices around.

In this podcast Im going to list the 7 most handy smart devices for an electrician.

Tools that make our job easier and smart devices we can install that make an electrician work better!

Stay until the end for a great idea on how you can generate more jobs using emails to get more jobs installing smart technology.

Tool box talk for electricians, helping electricians reduce stress, gain back time and earn more money.

Good morning and welcome back to another episode on tool box talks for electricians, Im Ben poulter your host.

Today podcast is about smart devices, if you haven't got any your missing out, the most popular of course is your mini computer in your pocket!

They make life so much easier, weather you want to find a local wholesalers or do a cable calculation.

Times have advanced over the years in smart tech. For use electricians it can help up get the job done quicker and also make our customers happy.

Im going to list 10 smart devices that electricians use in their business every day.

Top of the list is something that every single electrician has, a tester.

Not all testers are smart ones, But the ones that are!

Dam they are good.

With so many different brands of tester on the market, there is a competition who has the best one. Megger, fluke, kewtech to name a few.

Some of these testers can literally do it all, record your results, print of pat testing stickers and even tell you if the test is a pass of fail!

Yes it makes electricnas lazy and not have to get the BS7671 book out to check the limits, but it saves us so much time in the long run.

With so many different systems and regulations an electrician needs to remember, having a tester that tells you is a massive advantage.

The next one is for the customer more than the electrician I would say. Kinetic switches. They require no batteries and not cabling, not even a 12 vlot from a transformer.

The ease of being able to locate the switch ant where in the property is brilliant. Especially when the customer comes along and says “ Can we move the switch” with the kinetic ones you can put it in their pocket if you like.

An added bonus of these switches is that they also connect to an app on your smartphone.

When you explain to the customer that they can turn the lights on and off from anywhere in the world, they are impressed even more.

Depending on how old you are and what your like with modern tech.

These days your I pad for test results is your best friend.

How many times have you gone home, only just to sit in front of the computer and transfer the test results to a certificate to send to the customer!

When I first started out, this was me all the time.

You can do it on your phone, I do know some software that lets you do that, but having a decent size screen to fill in results is so handy when it comes to testing.

You have drop down menus, them even a validation tab where you can check all the reading against all the details you have put in.

If the software is kept up to date, it will even tell you if the test is a pass of fail too.

This can all be done on site, exported to a PDF file and emailed to your customer before you have even got back in the van.

Perfect for EICR reports if you do a lot of them.

Over the past 2 years Electricians must have installed 1000s of the video camera doorbells.

The advantages to a video camera on your door is huge in this day and age with door to door salesman and deliveries.

Not to mention the security for the property too.

How simple they are to install is great too, the hardest part is updating the software when you get them straight out the box.

The advantage of some of the video doorbells is that you can also have CCTV cameras on the same app too, so customers can also have you install them along with the doorbells.

Security in the UK has recently up its game all over. People are having big gates put on their property to keep unwanted visitors out.

The problem with this is that they have to open the gate to get out the property.

Not with automatic gate automation, there are smart systems that sense your vehicle coming home and it opens up the gate automatically.

Of course, the gates need an electrical supply to be able to work and them the whole system will need to be configured too.

There are electrical companies who specialise in gate automation services.

I was with a friend the other day who got a delivery. The delivery driver rang the video doorbell and he was asked to place the delivery inside the garage.

We were 100 miles away from the property and he was able to open the garage door and close it all from his phone.

That was something that I thought was pretty cool!

When phones were small and you could fit them in a 70mm hole to look for cables it was perfect.

Today for some reason phones have got that little bit bigger and no longer fit in the hole.

Of course there is a solution for this too now, the smart cameras that fit on the end of your rods.

SuperRods and CK do them.

They are not just handy for fishing cables from ceilings voids. If an electrician is fault finding and needs to know where a cable is damaged before he breaks the news to the customer that he needs to cut a hole in their beautifully finished ceiling, They can show the customer the problem 100% with a camera.

Its happened to me before with a freshly plastered ceiling, 3 for the lights had a live to Neutral fault.

There was no point in turning them on, I needed to find what happened.

The only way was to use the holes where the lights fitted.

I was able to prove that the plaster had put extra supports in for the plaster board and put a screw through one of the cables.

Now I know accidents happen, but it wasn't like it was hidden!

Every electrician knows if you go to an install to replace a light fitting or a socket, it's always labelled which circuit it is on the fuse board.

Its never wrong and you don't have to go through each circuit to figure out witch one it is!

Notice the sarcasm there! Its never labelled correct, and the customers never wants you to switch the whole board off to determine what circuit its on!

This is where a circuit fuse finder comes in very handy. By simply plugging one end into the circuit and testing each mcb at the other end.

You can even do it with lighting pendants if you wire a lighting socket into a 13 amp plug.

In some of the properties they haven't even got any labels on the consumer unit, these circuit finders are very handy.

There are so many products being released all the time to do with smart technology.

Coffee machines you can turn on from anywhere in the world! God knows why, but if someone makes it - somesones going to buy it.

There are automatic conduit benders, that bend the conduit to a perfect 90.

In my eyes thats just lazy!

But like I say, if its out there on the market, then someone will buy it.

It is like housing estates where one person has new lights installed in their garden, next door will want better colour changing lighting, the next house will want lights that change to the music.

It's what customers do, they want to be the best.

So they need electricians to install it for them.

This is where the email newsletter comes in. just a polite news letter letting your customers know what's out there.

I have some free downloads in side the toolbox talk for electricians group on facebook you can use for free to generate work from your customers.

Join the group and check out the guide section.

Until next time - I will see you again.