I want to connect my PS3 to a smart switch so that when I turn my Pre/pro on or off it turns on or off.

Will this cause problems?

If by a trigger switch you mean cutting the power on and off to the PS3 that is not a good idea. First off, there is no way to turn on the PS3 without manually pressing the power button or a bluetooth command afaik. As far as turning it off I personally like to make sure whatever disk I'm playing/watching stops spinning first and the only way to do that is a proper power down.

If by a trigger switch you mean cutting the power on and off to the PS3 that is not a good idea. First off, there is no way to turn on the PS3 without manually pressing the power button or a bluetooth command afaik. As far as turning it off I personally like to make sure whatever disk I'm playing/watching stops spinning first and the only way to do that is a proper power down.

Yes, cutting the circuit is just like flipping the switch.

Nothing is touching the disk so it will stop spinning on its own if power is cut. DVD players over the years have had zero problems with these types of setups.

Im more curious about what other things the PS3 does during its shutdown.

Since the PS3 won't turn on by simply "flipping the switch", I would say the point is moot. As far as just cutting power off, I have no technical data to back me up but it just doesn't sound like a good idea at all. Mainly because of the hard drive I suppose.

Seems like over time you might have problems with data corruption if you don't allow the PS3 to follow it's power down sequence (whatever it may be).

As the others have said, I think the only problem might arise from cutting power to the PS3 before it's been turned off. I can understand the desire to eliminate the stand-by power drain, so if you choose to do this, it would just be essential that you (and everyone else who uses the system) turn off the PS3 from your PS3 controller, and that the console completely shuts down on its own BEFORE you shut off your pre/pro and trigger the power switch.

The problem is that if you don't allow the PS3 to complete its shutdown procedure, you could corrupt data on the hard drive and render it unusable. Then, assuming you could still start the system, you'd have to reformat the drive to bring it back to functionality.