Smart plugs or Wi-Fi-enabled sockets can be had for less than €15 these days. They allow lamps and other consumer appliances to be controlled remotely (some units can even record the appliance power consumption). For electronics engineers, it’s not always that simple. Questions such as “I wonder what hardware they are using there?” and thoughts like “I might be able to swap out the firmware and use a different cloud platform to the one specified by the manufacturer” are always in the back of our mind. To check out the internals of some of these smart sockets and find out which ones are more hacker-friendly, I turned to my toolbox and took out screwdrivers, a hacksaw, a camera, and a magnifying glass.