Amazon Echo - no thread yet?

Synj

Synj

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Arative said:
Does anyone know a difference between the phillips hue and sylvania lightify osram lights? I'm looking at both of them and the sylvania are cheaper.
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Consider the Lifx stuff. Wifi built into bulbs, no bridge necessary, able to create rooms, groups, schedules, scenes all through app on phone, compatible with Echo, IFTTT and other stuff. Vibrant colors, brighter whites, good reviews and also a nice LED strip that is 3 feet longer for almost the same price as the Hue's version.
 
meStevo

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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I almost went Lifx, but last thing I needed is more things on my wifi with the issues i've been having with it lately.

Any quick and dirty suggestions for buying bulbs? I bought wife an ambiance kit and got a couple of the floodlight bulkbs for her crochet area (replacing similar bulbs), letting her control exactly the kind of light for when she does her craft shit, which she loved. Picked up a bulb for an orphaned lamp in the bedroom (not on a switch) and a colored bulb for play w/ in the living room.

How far off are earlier gen bulbsd, if we're all on ambiance-style bulbs is a really big drop off if we bought cheaper older bulbs (and there are some other off brands that work too right?)

Created a bunch of triggers but they're silly and awkward (trigger living room lights energize!) and need to simplify the language I used, rename some of the rooms (have both Living Room and Living Room Light and things get confused).

Overall, pretty neat, we're going to be buying a lot more bulbs, and might look into getting some string lighting for the kitchen, stuff for the kids rooms, etc.
 
fris

fris

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Thats why smart switches are better than smart bulbs. Get the tp link outlet plug or wall switch. Then use whater bulb type you want. Plus, voice commands done have to be more verbose, no user of word "trigger".
 
meStevo

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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It doesnt. Amazon won't have anything unless the guy shouted the wake word as he was being murdered.

'Alexa, Bob is killing me'
 
A

a_skeleton_03

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fris said:
Thats why smart switches are better than smart bulbs. Get the tp link outlet plug or wall switch. Then use whater bulb type you want. Plus, voice commands done have to be more verbose, no user of word "trigger".
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You don't have to use "trigger" at all with bulbs.

So I have a bunch of lights downstairs in my kitchen, 4 cans and 4 drop down style. I have them all combined as one group even though they are on multiple switches. This way I say "Alexa, kitchen lights on" and they all turn on. I can tell her sink lights on and only the ones over the sink come on, etc etc.

Bulbs are the way to go if you want to do any large room. Switch is the way to go if you want to do a single bedroom or a hallway, something like that. I will need to get a few switches also for fans. I also have a fireplace with electric start and I can't wait to put a switch in that and go "Alexa, fire on" and it lights!!
 
fris

fris

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if you have one switch that powers multiple bulbs, you rather control each bulb individually? Smart bulbs are about 25 bucks, where a basic led light is only 5. i don't have faith on the smart bulbs lasting 5x longer than an led bulb. I have 2 switches for my kitchen, and I can say "kitchen lights on" and they both turn on. Or i can say "downstairs on" and everything there turns on. Or i can say "kitchen light 1 on" if i want to individually control.

we did get one wall plug adapter that had watt monitoring. it was interesting to measure the actual difference in power consumed between old school incandescent, cfl and led. if you have the light one for 8 hours a day, a LED will pay for itself in 3 months over an old school light. will take over a year if you already have a CFL though.
 
A

a_skeleton_03

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fris said:
I have 2 switches for my kitchen, and I can say "kitchen lights on" and they both turn on. Or i can say "downstairs on" and everything there turns on. Or i can say "kitchen light 1 on" if i want to individually control.
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Right but you can't control individual lights within a switch. I have four lights on one switch, only two of them directly over the sink. With it being at the bulb level I can say "Alexa, sink lights on" and only get those on.

Home automation is not about how cheap it is! I will have at least $1k spent on it all by the time I get all the bulbs, switches, and echo's that I want around the house.
 
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meStevo

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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Yeah, I use triggers for the stuff Alexa doesn't natively support (Hue scenes).

We mostly just use off/on/set %, rather than the triggers.
 
Arative

Arative

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What smart switches would you all recommend? The wemo smart switch look pretty good. I think I'm going with Phillips hue for bulbs but I do have a number of areas that I can just use regular led bulbs and smart switches.
 
fris

fris

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I've only tried to link wall switches. Wiring is a pain, but after that was almost instantly dime
 
Ignatius

Ignatius

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So I've got my own personal setup for my place, but took a chance and got my mom her own Echo and some smart plugs (wemo). Didn't have a chance to set them up, but apparently she went ahead and got everything working.

Absolutely loves it, and now she wants to automate even more. Has anyone used the door locks and have a preference? I think that will be the next upgrade we do to her house.
 
ToeMissile

ToeMissile

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Ignatius said:
So I've got my own personal setup for my place, but took a chance and got my mom her own Echo and some smart plugs (wemo). Didn't have a chance to set them up, but apparently she went ahead and got everything working.

Absolutely loves it, and now she wants to automate even more. Has anyone used the door locks and have a preference? I think that will be the next upgrade we do to her house.
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Don't have a link handy but iirc they're pretty much all shite for security from hacks.
 
Denamian

Denamian

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Someone set up 2 Google Homes to talk to each other. They often get caught in loops accusing each other of being robots, but there's some funny shit in there too.

 
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