When my fiancee and I say “Alexa, bed time”, a few things happen:
All lights in house go off, porch light comes on.
- A/C in the living room goes off, if it’s on.
- A/C in the master bedroom comes on, if it’s off.
- TV turns off, if it’s on.
My fascination with automating processes in the home has been a thing long before it was a thing. This thing is known as the Internet of things, or IoT for short.
I know, you’re like me, even if you don’t want to admit it. There are days when I don’t want to get up to turn off the bathroom light, the kitchen light, or any light in my home for that matter; but you have to, you know, because of insert your utility company of choice here. Some people call us lazy, I call us efficient.
So, all of this sounds crazy and you’re this far into the post because you’re curious about how you can also say “Alexa, bed time” and have all of these magical things happen in your own abode. For me, this has been a 2 or 3 year journey that started in or around December 2017. The gateway drug for me was a Google Home Mini1, a “smart speaker” as they’re called. It allows you to ask stuff and it responds with the correct answers, most of the time. So, you could say “Hey Google, who’s the president of the USA and it would say “Barack Obama”, Donald Trump, magical, eh?
Your own “Alexa, bed time”
So, as I mentioned earlier, my gateway drug was a smart speaker from Google called “Home mini”. I liked it, it worked well and I used it for a while. I eventually got bored and wanted more, I also realized that I couldn’t connect my Apple Music account to Google Home Mini and switched to Amazon’s answer to Google Home called Echo. You can find it here. It’s pretty easy to setup. Plug it in, follow the instructions and you’re well on your way.
Once your Echo Smart Speaker is setup, you’ll need to purchase some hue lights, this particular package comes with 4 lights, but if you’re a white light kind of person as my wife-to-be is, go for the more expensive package if you have it like that.
Again, follow the instructions, set the lights up and you’re twenty percent close to saying “Alexa, bed time”.
To get your air conditioning off, any air conditioner, you need something called Sensibo. You can find that here. Sensibo turns your dumb, non-smart Air conditioner into a smart A/C that you can control from anywhere in the world.
To get your TV to turn off or on, grab a smart plug2 called Etekcity. You can find it here.
We’re almost finished! So, you have all these devices, but you’re operating them individually via varying apps on your smart phone. Let’s fix this
Open the Alexa app on your smart phone, preferably an iPhone, connect all the devices you’ve purchased in the Alexa app by going to the “devices” section. Once you’re there, click the plus sign in the top right hand corner and find the respective brand for the respective devices and connect them.
Once you’ve connected them, select the 3 lines in the top left hand corner of the Alexa app.
Select the plus sign in the top right hand corner of routines section
Under new routines select “When this happens”
Click “Voice”
Aaaaand, we’re here! Enter whatever phrase you want, of course I use “Alexa, bed time” this phrase subsequently triggers a series of actions which I’ve outlined above. You can of course create whatever routine you want, you’re also not limited with what you can create, so get creative.
You can see my full “Alexa, bed time” routine below.
Earlier today, I was discussing with my fiancee the next routine; she doesn’t really care about the technical aspects of it, i.e all of what I’ve written above, but she does enjoy the actual routines. We’ve decided that it’s going to be “Alexa, we’re home”. This will immediately activate the living rooms lights, soothing music
(for her that’s India Arie) and it will likely turn on the air conditioning in the living room; fun times.
If you’re an Alexa Echo fan and you use routines, I’d love to know what you’ve created. If not and you choose to execute something like this please reach out and let me know. I’d love to know what you create as the possibilities are endless.
- Fun fact, you can’t find Google Home on Amazon, fun story behind that and the complex Google/Amazon relationship ︎
- There’s a smart everything nowadays ︎
Originally published on gordonswaby.com on 2019-07-06 (recovered from the Internet Archive).