By now we’ve all heard about the benefit to keeping a light or two on in the house when you’re away so as to discourage burglars.  But the problem with this is that, one, you leave a light burning nonstop and you boost your power bill, and two, the burglars may eventually figure out that it’s the same light in your house that’s always on.  Thus, some turn to timers to make their lights switch on and off at prearragned times, and one of the best is the Emerson Digital SmartSet Lamp Control Security Timer.

This remote will actually allow you to PROGRAM your lamps to come on at different times of day, much like how you would if you were home personally.  You don’t turn your lamp on promptly at eight PM every night–some nights you’re five minutes late, or ten minutes early, or an hour late.  The Emerson will actually allow you to simulate that, being programmable to turn devices on and off at certain times.

You can even set the device to “random” operation and the preprogrammed times will be varied by as much as an hour and fifteen minutes either way.

I have to admit, if I did more traveling, I might well want a device like this in my house, trying to fool burglars into believing I’m home, even when I’m not.

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Features:

• Radio with built-in iPod dock
• Alarm clock, .6-inch LED, 99 minute nap, touchless snooze

Features:

• 1366×768 resolution with a 8ms response time
• 1000:1 contrast ratio, built-in HD tuner, V-chip embedded, HDMI input and more

Buy it: Emerson LC320EM8 32-inch LCD HDTV – $390