Wteske Dual Stage Digital Temperature Controller Review

Wteske Dual Stage Digital Temperature Controller Review

Buy it at Amazon: Wteske Dual Stage Digital Temperature Controller [Affiliate Link]

Takeaway: Accurate temperature measurements, easy and convenient usage, heats and cools.

You’ll receive the temperature controller, thermometer, and an instruction manual. This is the main controller. It measures 5 inches long, 2.5 inches wide, and 1.25 inches thick. On the front there’s an LCD with 2 inch diagonal, power button, settings, button, and up and down adjustment keys. On the back there’s a hanger at the top of the unit. To the left-hand side is the 6 ft power cable with 3-prong ground plug and on the right are the controlled sockets. The socket on the right is for your heating device and the one on the left is for your cooling device. They are marked, though the print here is a bit hard to see. To the left of the power cable is an input port for the thermometer, which sits at the end of a 6 ft cable. There’s even a small suction cup on the cable to help you keep the wire in place once you’ve determined the proper location for it.

When you first plug in the device, it may be showing Celsius units. To change to Fahrenheit, press the settings key. The top number is the current temperature at the thermometer, the second is the max temperature, and the third is the minimum temperature. When the current temp is less than the minimum temperature, you’ll see this fire icon up to, which indicates that the outlet for the heating device is powered on. The exclamation point in a circle is an audible alarm which sounds when there is a short or open circuit detected. To stop the alarm just press any key on the unit. If you want to disable this alarm, press and hold the down key on the unit until the icon disappears.

To change the max and min temp settings, press and hold the settings key until the decimal place for the max temperature starts blinking. You can adjust the target max temp by hundreds, tens, ones, or tenths of a degree; just press the settings key to change positions. Note that the max setting is 110 degrees F and once you go above 100, you can’t adjust down from the hundreds position for some reason. Instead, switch back to the singles or tens position to change the temperature down again. To change the min temp, press and hold the setting key again, then you can adjust the min temp in the same way you did the max temp. The lowest temperature you can set here is negative 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

In my test, I was able to have the unit maintain the temperature in a room within a range that I set using a space heater and a fan. Note that the min temp only serves to trigger the on event for the heater. It will continue to run the heating device until it comes within 3.5 degrees of the max temperature. similarly, the unit will continue to run the cooling device after surpassing the max temp until it comes within 3.5 of the min temp.

This temperature controller has smart capabilities and can be controlled via the Smart Life app on a mobile device. There’s a QR code in the manual to find where to download it from the Google Play store or Apple App store. Once in the app, tap the blue plus in the upper right hand corner and select socket Wi-Fi. Then enter your network’s name and password. You’ll need to activate WiFi pairing on the unit by pressing and holding the power button until you see the WiFi icon flash in the upper left corner. When the unit has been added to the app the icon will be steady.

After adding it to the app, there was a firmware update which I decided to install. This helps fix issues and bugs with the unit. You can toggle on automatic updates as well. Just note that during updating the unit will stop operating briefly. The temperature controller's interface shows the current temperature is on the left and these and the max and min temps. You can change the max and min by tapping on them then adjusting the setting here. Interestingly, when I set the min temp to 63 degrees, the LCD showed the setting as 62.9 degrees. I’m not sure why there’s a tenth of a degree discrepancy, but I’m guessing it’s some sort of rounding error when converting from Celsius to Fahrenheit and while it’s technically a bug, the small difference in temperature generally won’t matter much in a real-world application.

The app can also show you historical graphs of the device’s usage history and you can change other settings like add a cooling delay, high and low temperature alarms, units, and calibrate the thermometer by adding offsets if it seems inaccurate. Another common application for this device is for gardeners who start seeds indoors to control the soil temperature to allow for optimal germination conditions for their plants. With both heating and cooling options, that makes this device suitable for all seasons whether you need a bit of extra heat in colder month or need to cool things down from excessive heat in warmer ones.

Buy it at Amazon: Wteske Dual Stage Digital Temperature Controller [Affiliate Link]