Let Amazon Echo do the work for you - Setting up a Smart Home

Have you purchased an Amazon Echo device for your home? Congratulations! You're all set to convert your abode into a smart home! Amazon Echo, with its inbuilt voice assistant Alexa at your disposal, makes it easy to ooze transformation everywhere around the house. Let’s find out how you can put Alexa to the best use for appliances and functions around the house.

Alexa and Compatible Devices

There are many smart devices available in the markets that are compatible with Alexa. Be it smart speakers, light bulbs, or cameras, Alexa can control them easily and effectively. Alexa has been designed for controlling lights, plugs, and devices and enabling them to seamlessly work together through single command groups.

It takes only commands to set up the ambient atmosphere and the right mood in your house, the moment you step in! Similarly, when you’re ready for bed, all it takes is one command to switch all the lights off…. It’s as simple as that!

Setting Up a Smart Home

Invest in all the smart devices you would actually use, including cameras, lights, heaters, and plugs. Set them all up as you usually do even before linking them up to Alexa. The setup typically involves following manufacturer instructions, plug in, connecting hub to a router, installing any relevant apps, searching for the device and entering their passcodes.

As hard as it is to believe, there are a wide range of devices that are compatible with Alexa. Smart lighting includes Philips Hue and Hive lights, smart heating includes Tado, Hive Active Heating and Nest Learning Thermostat, and cameras include Arlo and Ring Video Doorbell, as well as a range of plugs.

Compatible Devices for Alexa

There was a time when all the devices that Alexa could command over had to be of the same brand. It’s no longer the case. Now, you can mix and match brands and devices without any hassles. That is one of the biggest advantages of using Amazon Echo with Alexa. However, there is an advantage coming from using bulbs and plugs of the same brand.

By doing that, you’ll be using the same hub and app across all devices and that keeps everything easy and tidy. Amazon also conveniently lists out the devices that are compatible with Alexa and that makes the job of choosing and buying based on brands, price, and quality easy.

Echo Plus and Zigbee

Zigbee is a wireless standard used with different smart devices. In Echo Plus, Zigbee lets you set up a smart home device without the need to painstakingly following all the manufacturer’s instructions. Echo Plus can directly communicate with Zigbee and provide controls without the intervention of a hub or app. But it also has its disadvantages.

If you use Zigbee instead of, say, Hue app, you’ll not be able to access many of the advanced controls like custom colors or Hue’s scenes nor any of the firmware’s updates. So, it’s a good idea to use Zigbee only for basic light bulbs and not for advanced devices.

Equipping Alexa

Alexa Skills are essential for holding together different devices that make up the smart home. Skills basically instruct Alexa what it is looking for and what a particular device is capable of doing. As a last step, you will ask Echo and Alexa to scan all the devices in the house.

This is an important step but takes less than a minute. Alexa will then list out all available devices and all you have to do is interact with the devices to test if they’re working perfectly. You can also activate the devices using your voice through the Echo Smart app in your android smartphone.

After Setup

Now that you’ve set up your smart home, the real achievement is in using your voice to control all the connected devices. Open the Alexa app and tap on the Smart Home icon. You will then see a list of devices that Alexa currently recognizes. You might even find duplicate devices if you accidentally made changes to the setup or skill.

Use the app to manage the devices. Otherwise you’ll end up engaging in a frustrating conversation with Alexa, with Alexa asking “Which one?” while you explain your choice.

Alexa Group and Routines

How much smarter can a smart home be? Grouping is one feature that lets you control multiple devices at one time, allowing many things to happen at the same time. All the devices in a particular group will react to one command.

Say, if you have grouped all the devices in the living room, you can use a simple command like “Alexa, turn on my living room lights!” to activate only the lights in the living room. Routines stand one step ahead of groups. It provides an unthinkable degree of automation.

It allows actions for certain trigger phrases and support for third-party scenes too. A Hue lighting scene or a Harmony remote scene is a typical example of what Alexa Routines can achieve. When you make the most of Alexa and Echo Plus, then you can transform your home like never before!