This coming week my life will change and will supposedly never be the quite same again. I’m about to get my very own electronic personal assistant in the form of Amazon’s Echo device with Alexa.
Alexa will henceforth be my friend, my slave, my fount of all knowledge, ever listening waiting to obey my every command and capable of running my house for me. That’s the promise I’ve been sold on and I’m going to be one of the very first in the UK to receive my Echo as Amazon are going to rush it to me on release day, Wednesday the 28th.
I’m already starting to wonder what Alexa will actually be able to do for me though. I don’t live in London so there are no Uber cars that Alexa can summon for me – ordering a taxi is off the menu. Also food is problematic – Just Eat is Amazon’s chosen partner and whilst they might be great in the nation’s capital, around here there are only a handful of Indian restaurants and a kebab shop available to order from. It’s Sunday lunch time and they’re almost all currently shut anyway.
Still where I really want Alexa to help me is running my house and being my personal butler. That’s after all where these artificial intelligence devices should excel isn’t it? I’ve been sold a false promise though, my life won’t change that much as Alexa won’t be able to do very much for me at all. I’ve been trying to find ways to help Alexa make my life better but solutions are a bit thin on the ground:
Heating and hot water
Thanks to a British Gas company called Hive, I can order a Hive Active Heating pack for £249 along which will enable Alexa to turn on my radiators, adjust the temperature and heat the hot water.
Lights
There are a number of solutions for lights such as Philips Hue and Hive Active Lights (£19 per bulb). These will work just fine but are pretty much limited to a standard bayonet or screw fitting. If you’ve got the small bayonet or any of the other five sizes of Edison screw bulbs then there are no solutions. You can also forget all GU (Halogen and LED spotlight) bulbs along with fluorescent tubes.
It would appear that to automate half the lights in my house I either need to change almost all of the light fittings or wait until someone invents a smart switch to replace my standard light switches. Frankly, though there are solutions available, I want the same manufacturer’s kit as my heating and hot water so that I can use the same smart hub to run it all and interface with Alexa. Hive just don’t have the range currently.
Appliances
Hive Active Plugs (£39 each) will enable Alexa to turn devices on and off for me, but here’s the disappointment. If I want Alexa to boil the kettle, I’ll need to have previously filled it with water. Turning my TV on will simply apply power to the TV but it will still be in standby mode. Active Plugs are good for things such as desk lamps which just have an on/off state, they’re not quite as good for anything else.
TV
Of course I want to say “Alexa, put on the BBC news” or “Alexa, turn the TV on when Dragon’s Den starts”, but this it would appear is nigh on impossible.Telling Alexa to record a program because I’m going to be out or to display a web page on my TV to illustrate a search result she’s just described to me is a pipe dream for the future.
I’ve been searching for a smart set top box which Alexa could control but these simply don’t appear to exist. Just getting Alexa to turn on a TV is problematic, we know we can apply power to the TV but it would appear that you need an infra red (IR) blaster hooked up to Alexa to actually take the TV out of standby and select an input or a channel.
IR Blasters are just too unreliable – what if I stand in the way or it gets knocked out of alignment? Where’s the feedback to Alexa to confirm the action has been completed? Why is it all so complicated to configure in the first place and this is just the TV, we haven’t tried to hook up the inevitable set top box yet.
Conclusion: My life is not about to change forever
If on top of Amazon Echo, I spend an additional odd £500 quid with Hive I’ll get a certain amount of home automation. Alexa will be able to control my central heating and there’ll be a few lights and appliances Echo can turn on and off for me.
Home entertainment and displaying the web on my TV just isn’t going to happen in the short term so far as I can tell. Regardless of the price I’d be willing to pay, there just don’t appear to be any Echo friendly products which can give Alexa control my of TV and set top box.
We’ve asked Amazon for some advice and help on choosing devices which will work with Amazon Echo, but information is very thin on the ground. Even Amazon appear to have a very limited number of employees in the UK who really know how Alexa Skills and third party products integrate.
If you know of (or work for) any suppliers of home automation products compatible with Alexa we’d love to hear from you. Tell us how you could automate my life, if you could enable Alexa to control my TV and what I could retro fit to my house to make Amazon Echo a product worth having rather than as it sadly appears it will be, a bit of a novelty that doesn’t actually do very much.
14 Responses
British Gas’s Hive is Crap when you compare to Honeywell’s Evo Home.
My scenario is 4 bed house, home office, Kids at school. Why heat the whole house during the day.
Br Gas bang on about turning your heating on from your mobile.
I asked Br Gas when they would have a system in place that you could control individual radiators. “It’s something they are working on”, was the reply. Too bloody late.
If I want a rad in my bedroom to come on at 6am and reach 25 degrees by 6:30 and then go off at 7am then hive can’t do that unless you want every other rad in the house on…
Looks like hive 2 is their latest innovation with 3 zones. Woooow.
Netatmo also offer a radiator valve solution.
Those smart switches you are waiting on being invented already have.
If I want to order a taxi, I’ll ring one. If I want a takeaway, the Just Eat app is nice and easy. If I want to turn the tele on, I’ll press the button on the remote. The world is getting lazier by the day and devices like this don’t help. If Amazon invent a device which can organize kitchen cupboards and present you with the thing you need as and when you need it, let me know.
Are you all really getting that lazy that you need to remotely switch on lights and central heating, organise something to eat or call a cab?
Are you all really nuts enough to spend several hundreds of £££ to turn on the central heating rather than risk coming home to a cold home and having to put on a sweatshirt until the place warms up?
As it stands at the moment, personally, I’d much rather trouser that money to pay for a holiday than spend it on a bunch of gizmos that are very likely going to be obsolete by the time they are delivered.
I might just become interested in this sort of “making my life easier” technology when it becomes a standard part of new-build, family starter homes as, by that time, it >>might<< have matured enough to add some value to every-day life.
Until then, I hope all of you cutting-edgers continue to spend your surplus money on such things so that us mere mortals will benefit in a decade or so!! 🙂 🙂
Just get Samsung Smartthings. Use that as the hub to control your lights and thermostat and use Echo to control that. I have it and it works really well.
She won’t change your life. You’ll have to change your life for her to accommodate your desires. Plus, being across the pond, it looks like you’re still pretty limited compared to in the States. But, It’s replaced my home sound system, and that’s awesome. Every morning she gives me all the news I could want over coffee, she gives me great music with my Prime membership, she’s a great Bluetooth speaker, and some of the games and skills are quite fun. We have no smart stuff in the house, I have a thermostat, a switch for lights, and no need for that stuff. All in all, for most of us, she’s a toy. But, she’s a useful toy, in our situation.
– incorrect, Hue GU10 spots work
– use IFTTT with Logitech Harmony hub – set up all your devices/activites sets, e.g. TV HDMI2, AVR and FireYTV Stick
– use IFTTT
– use Skills
– use Hue lights (you’ll be hooked)
I’m not quite sure what this post is trying to achieve. Alexa is the very first of a new category of devices, to claim it would offer you the ultimate automation is extremely naive.
Here what the Alexa ecosystem does really well for me:
– voice controlled access to music via Spotify and playing any radio station I can think of around the world.
– news, weather, answers simple questions, checks movie times, traffic on my route to work, maintains a shopping list (paired with IFTTT it’s brilliant), a ToDo List, sets timers and alarms, and manages my calendar.
– the development ecosystem is brilliant, very simple and effective. Making skills for it is fun and easy. I have several set up to provide me updates to the likes of public transport arrival times in my area.
– smart home automation with WeMo switches, effortless to set up, and easy operation e.g. “Alexa, turn on the living room lamp”
At the crux of it, Alexa is less of a personal assistant and more of a voice controlled launchpad for skills and smart home devices. In that respect it is really very good. Plus it’s relegated my Sonos system to the back room as the speaker is remarkably decent, and playing music and radio stations is so effortless.