It was a slippery slope....
(1) Installed the Alexa network.
(2) Installed Ecobee smart thermostats because they had remote sensors. Alexa was on board, but it was a nuisance and not used. I did name the thermostats by their location; upstairs and downstairs. Wife controls them by phone app or manually.
(3) Installed Hubitat for smarthome lighting & water control. Later, I activated the Alexa program module which extended voice control to the smart devices.
I knew that Alexa was threaded through all of these systems, but never tried to establish control of the thermostats outside the phone app. (As mentioned elsewhere, the WAF is *high* on these Ecobees and I don't have to do jack with them, so I purposely don't get involved.)
This morning, the upstairs hvac was set on air conditioning from last night. The temperatures dropped overnight and we needed to switch to heat. Wife didn't want to get out of bed and was too groggy to open her phone to the app. I don't have an app see above don't have to do jack So I just told the bedroom Alexa "Set the upstairs thermostat to heat." And it did.
That was both awesome and creepy.
https://vimeo.com/270905839
Hah that's pretty cool actually.
What do you get the most use of that you've done so far?
Good question. I had to mull it over thinking about which I would give up if forced to choose.
We use the Alexa reminders, integrated grocery app skill (OurGroceries), and to-do list skill (ToDoist) the most. Combined, they are like having a personal secretary. That'd be what I'd part with last. Because of the smarthome addition, voice control is already getting moderate use and growing. It's a handy convenience, but not a must-have. <added> Louise uses VC a lot more than I do.
Next-most used and popular would be the thermostats and their app. I'd have to pry the app out of Louise's hand if we were to give those up.
That puts the smarthome stuff last, but we'd sure miss it if it had to go. A good bit of what it does is automatic and behind the scenes, so we don't think about it --like water heater timers, driveway lighting at sunset, etc. It just does its thing. But we've also become accustomed to other features such as lights on when someone enters the room, or controlling lights in distant parts of the house, etc. The security stuff -exterior lighting, vehicle detection, motion near the front entrance- make us feel like we have more awareness and control of the perimeter and are possibly better prepared.
Pretty sweet setup there. We just have the list building stuff mainly for shopping and she loves it. We've been doing the grocery delivery/subscription thing, she checked out several of the bigger providers and settled on one so that makes the grocery list easier.
When I emailed my daughter about the house being sentient, she teasingly replied
QuoteIt will be even creepier when mom whispers "Brrr. It's chilly in here." And Alexa replies that she's fixing the temperature.
So I tried it.
Holy crap! "Echo, it's cold in here." works.
It replies "Which thermostat would you like to use?"
When told "upstairs," it replies "OK, I'm increasing the temperature by 2 degrees for 2 hours."
When I visit if your Alexa calls anyone Dave I'm out.
>Dave
Ain't that the truth.
I'm not sure I'm ready for a running conversation with my house.
Dras, if you're getting into VC for devices around the house, AMZ has the Echo Input for $20 (on sale?). They're Dots without speakers, so no annoying chatter. Great for places where you just want to control TV, lights, etc.
House speakers now tell us when the washing machine has finished (it is an old, analog machine with no buzzer or alert). Scored high WAF on this one.
But how do it know? Power plug?
>power plug
Yeah, a 120v wall wart (usually used for on/off) that also reports wattage as a sidebar. The hubitat is set to figure that a wash cycle starts when watts hit 700. Rinse drops to 3 watts. When it drops <2, it's done. Then it sends out a text-to-speech message to Google Home Mini.
>We use the Alexa reminders, integrated grocery app skill (OurGroceries), and to-do list skill (ToDoist) the most.
In the smarthome world, there are developers who write custom apps as donationware. Some make it big enough that they start subscription services. Several of the devs currently do donationware for Hubitat. One just wrote a Notifier app which can -among other things- use TTS. I just used it to replace all of our Alexa repeating reminders thereby moving them to local-only. Bezos is going to miss knowing that my "Roomba runs downstairs today."
Quote from: rcjordan on February 13, 2019, 12:40:47 AM
When I emailed my daughter about the house being sentient, she teasingly replied
QuoteIt will be even creepier when mom whispers "Brrr. It's chilly in here." And Alexa replies that she's fixing the temperature.
So I tried it.
Holy crap! "Echo, it's cold in here." works.
It replies "Which thermostat would you like to use?"
When told "upstairs," it replies "OK, I'm increasing the temperature by 2 degrees for 2 hours."
Can you get Alexa with the voice of HAL from 2001? :)
"Echo, increase the temperature."
"I'm sorry RC, I can't do that."
https://www.rachio.com/gen-2/
This has intrigued me this week. Not only for the water saving aspect (that part would probably be much more useful in rainier climates) but for being able to control everything from my phone. Much easier to be out in the yard and turn on channels to troubleshoot problems than running back and forth to the basement.
Some Hubitat developers have integrated Rachio into the hubitat system for more automated controll. I think there are other sprinkler systems, as well. In the US, sprinklers aren't top-level smarthome concerns but definitely a high second-tier.
<added>
> only for the water saving aspect
Actually, being sure that the sprinkler system is truly off is a significant issue. Apparently, sprinkler solenoid valves stick open and the results are big water bills.
I'm working on a related issue with the deep well that supplies the geothermal heat pump. If the discharge solenoid doesn't close properly, the pump just runs needlessly --and that pump is an expensive pita to replace. I've just put a flow switch in the pipe that I can monitor and have ordered a relay which will tell me if the pump is running.
>HAL from 2001
Yes. Yes, it will: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/10/17101442/hal-9000-2001-a-space-odyssey-amazon-alexa-master-replicas-group-open-the-pod-bay-doors
..but we shouldn't bank online.
Hehe, toying with Echo/Alexa as well - but only for tuning on TV's, Xbox and the casual weather, play music etc.
We primarily use alexa for lights and music control.
The other day I was not in the mood to repeat myself and got one of those long explanations about repeating myself. Did you know, alexa knows exactly what stfu means, and acts on it. Pretty cool.