Back in the analog days, your light was controlled either at the lamp or at the switch. If you were going on vacation, you might plug it into a clock work timer so no one noticed the house was unoccupied. As we move to home automation, you have a lot of flexibility in how to control things. Do you want to control at the wall, the lamp or the bulb?
In some ways, having a smart device plugged into a switched outlet is a terrible idea. If you turn off the switch, the smart device doesn’t have power available to listen for network commands. One way to solve this is to install a smart switch. To install the switch, you need to be comfortable working with wiring, and you need a true neutral wire. My old house (1958) didn’t have a neutral, but the new house (1973) does.
Another way to add brains to your light is to use a smart plug. This is a small box (they seem to get smaller every year) with a plug on one side and a receptacle on the opposite. Plug the smart plug into the wall, plug the lamp into the smart plug and then add the smart plug to your network. A smart plug is the easiest way to make any dumb appliance into a smart device, as long as it has mechanical switches.
The third way to add brains to a light is to install a smart bulb. Some bulbs must be connected to a hub, while others connect directly to your WiFi network. The downside to this is that for someone to control your bulb, they have to have access to your home set up. You’re probably not going to go to the effort to give every dinner guest access to your home, but it’s pretty annoying when your mother-in-law needs help to turn on the lights in the living room.
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