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Automate Outdoor Lights with the Minoston Matter Outdoor Smartplug [MP22M]
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May 29, 2025
Imaging having all your outdoor holiday lights integrated into your smart home configuration. Saying "Alexa, turn on Christmas lights" or "Siri, turn off outdoor lights" and having it just work. That's the benefit of the Minoston Outdoor Smartplug, powered by Matter. It's easy to setup, easy to program, and works perfectly for the task. Tech expert Dave Taylor walks thru pairing the device and programming an on-at-dusk, off-at-midnight schedule for his own holiday lights in this detailed video. Includes explanation of Matter global, open source smart home standard too. Check it out at: https://amzn.to/3AnAVdt Visit Dave's Q&A Web site at: https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ #smarthome #smartplug #lighting #holidaylighting #christmaslights #minoston #askdavetaylor
View Video Transcript
0:00
turn your outdoor Outlets into smart
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power outlets with this device let's
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check it
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[Music]
0:11
out Dave tale here and I'm just about to
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start putting up some of my holiday
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lights to make my house more festive and
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this is a great thing to do but what I
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don't want to have to do when I'm done
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is I don't want to have to turn on and
0:25
off or plug and unplug those lights
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every time I want to have control over
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them enter this this is one of a
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category of devices that are called
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outdoor smart plugs and they are game
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changers this is the minist matter
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outdoor smart plug and matter is really
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important because matter is actually a
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sort of global open-source standard for
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smart home devices because all the
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vendors heard from all of us consumers
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who said we don't want to have 50
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different app and all these things be
1:01
incompatible so this by using matter is
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future proof which is really important
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but it also means that it works with
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Alexa Apple home Google home and Samsung
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smart things so all of those it'll just
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integrate into their systems without any
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further hassle don't have a hub for any
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of those that's okay you don't need a
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hub because you can also just use their
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Smart Life app and that actually
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controls a variety of different things
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from multiple vendors and I'll show you
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how that all works I'll configure this
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in just a minute but I want to tell you
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this is a three-prong outlet and you see
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that on the end and it is up to 15 amps
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and it's Wi-Fi enabled so this little
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guy actually has a lot of smarts inside
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of it it also very importantly is ip65
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waterproof so I wouldn't have it sitting
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inside your pond but if it's outside and
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it gets rained or snowed on that's not
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going to be a problem and that's pretty
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darn important one more thing is there
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is a override switch here that little
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white button so you push it on push it
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off so you can override your programming
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but enough talking let me plug it in
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just happen to have an extension cord
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here and so right off the bat you can
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see that the light turns on and off and
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now it's in pairing mode that's why it's
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blinking so let's go ahead and pair this
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with my app and I'll let you see how
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easy that is so you want to look for the
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Smart Life app if you don't have any of
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those other utilities up there that's
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okay so I'm going to just open it up and
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you can see that it is instantly seen
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this new device how easy is that so I'm
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going to press
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add and that looks good so now
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I will have it being added and notice
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that there's that little Progress Circle
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I'm just going to jump forward so I
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don't have to watch it slowly handshake
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and we're done that's easy enough so now
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done and it says power off so now what
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I'm going to do is I'm actually going to
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plug in some completely Tangled but
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still functional holiday lights so I'm
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going to do that you can see it's all
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very easy to do and then I'm going to
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turn it
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on there we go and then I'm going to
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turn it off that's like 95% of the
3:29
functionality right there so nice now
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let's program something so I'm going to
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go into timer and then I'm going to add
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schedule and at let's see 5:30 p.m.
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every night let's go to 5:30 on every
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single
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night I'm going to have the switch turn
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on which will turn on my holiday festive
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holiday lights so I'm going to choose
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save and takes a moment or two to show
4:00
up sometimes but it'll show up here and
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then I'm going to go and add a second
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schedule so we already have that one
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there and now I'm going to say at 11:30
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p.m. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 at 11:30 p.m. I want
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to actually have everything turn off so
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we'll confirm that and I'll press save
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again and there you go so both of them
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are there and now you can see that at
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5:30 p.m. every day the switch will turn
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on and all my lights will turn on and
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then at 11:30 p.m. every night they will
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turn off now that's pretty darn easy
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that's all I have to do and there are
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some settings so you can do things like
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change the name of the device I think
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that's the pencil icon on the top right
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so you can see here that I can integrate
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it in with all of my other smart home
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systems I can turn on and off
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notifications so if I really want to get
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confirmation I could actually get a
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notification while I'm out of town or
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still at the office or out for dinner
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that just says holiday lights turned on
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so if that's your thing you can do that
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now again what's worth noting is that
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this is a WiFi based control system
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which means as long as this stays online
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and it has a really good range it works
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perfectly fine in my testing then as
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long as you're online you can turn it on
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and off from a thousand miles away you
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could literally be around the world
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and someone can say hey do me a favor
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turn off your holiday lights it's really
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annoying and you can be like okay Boop
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Bo Boop boom and they turn off even
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though you're not home tell me that's
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not great so it is a really nice device
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and now you can see I can override it
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with that button and I can leave it in
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this state so when 530 rolls around
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it'll turn on it's already on so it's
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fine it'll just say okay I guess that
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was just an override I can also turn
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them back back off and it's showing it
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would actually have updates on the app
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that match and parallel what I just did
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so that's everything it's really easy to
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control really easy to pair it's really
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easy to schedule this is a game Cher for
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you with anything that you have outside
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that you have powered up and this could
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include having like a fire pit if you
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want one where you want to just have it
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on or outside lights or Holiday Lights
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there's a lot of different use cases for
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this and of course you can also use it
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indoors so you could use this for your
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Christmas tree if you want and then just
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know that the device you got can also go
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outside if you decide that you want to
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use it differently next year and that's
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really great flexibility most
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importantly that matter compatibility
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means that it's going to be just as
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functional in 5 years when all these
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companies have changed all their
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standards and specs it'll still work
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just fine that's the benefit of the
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matter Global open sourc standard so
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definitely wanted to check out absolute
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game changer for people who want to have
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something festive
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happening hopefully with better and more
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exciting lights than these These are
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looking a little tired that's a separate
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story now we do need to talk price
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before we get there I'm going to invite
7:20
you to subscribe to my channel click or
7:23
tap on that subscribe button hit that
7:25
Bell icon for notifications give me a
7:27
thumbs up if you found this of value I
7:29
certainly hope that you did excellent
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this let me unplug this part at
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least this is the minist matter outdoor
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smart plug it is
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$17.99 currently with a 15% discount
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dropping it down to a ridiculous $1
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1529 at amazon.com for 15 bucks this is
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a no-brainer Edition and if you really
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wanted to you could plug in a sort of
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splitter or something they have very
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short extension cords where you plug in
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one and it gives you two or three plugs
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and then you could have a multitude of
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different outside lighting and outside
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things all control automated as part of
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your smart home absolute win I need to
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get this back outside so I'll have to
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catch you in my next video
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[Music]
#Consumer Electronics
#Gadgets & Portable Electronics
#Home Automation