Samsung Aiming to Release Smart Speaker to Compete With HomePod in First Half of 2018

[patseguin]

Add Philips Hue ( I put the bulbs in lamps we rarely use to make them more accessible) and WeMo Smartplugs (for the Christmas tree and coffee pot (from upstairs I can turn the coffee onm))to the mix and watch your universe expand.

Yep all my household lights are hue plus I control my Nest thermostat with it. When I wake up in the morning, I first tell my Google to turn off typer alarm clock, then turn on the lights, then set the heat to 72 (or cooling in summer). It's getting closer and closer to like being on the Enterprise D. ;-)
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I'm very new to all this smart stuff. I have it with my heating now but how does it work with bulbs etc? do you just need to have bulbs that fit the smart apps e.t.c?

As I would like to get one for my outside light so when I come home from night shifts the light is on e.t.c.

The Hue starter kit is all you need. It's a hub that controls the lighting and then you just add more bulbs whenever you want. The bulbs themselves connect to wifi and it's super easy. I can't remember the last time i actually manually turned on a light in my house haha.

 

[Gaspode67]

Yep all my household lights are hue plus I control my Nest thermostat with it. When I wake up in the morning, I first tell my Google to turn off typer alarm clock, then turn on the lights, then set the heat to 72 (or cooling in summer). It's getting closer and closer to like being on the Enterprise D. ;-)

Have you tried using IFTTT as well? That way (at least on Android/Google Assistant/Alexa) you can use a single command to perform multiple actions at the same time. All you have to do is make sure that your activation phrase(s) and defined assistant responses are the same for all the tasks, and it'll work smoothly.

The Hue starter kit is all you need. It's a hub that controls the lighting and then you just add more bulbs whenever you want. The bulbs themselves connect to wifi and it's super easy. I can't remember the last time i actually manually turned on a light in my house haha.

Little clarification here: It's not your wifi in the 802.11 sense of the word that most think of. It's a much lower power & bandwidth system commonly referred to as Zigbee (802.15.4). Because you're not sending complex amounts of data constantly across the system, it doesn't need to be as complex. It also allows for some aspects of a mesh to be implemented, so that one hub can control devices further away by using the devices closer to the hub to relay the signal.

 

[patseguin]

Have you tried using IFTTT as well? That way (at least on Android/Google Assistant/Alexa) you can use a single command to perform multiple actions at the same time. All you have to do is make sure that your activation phrase(s) and defined assistant responses are the same for all the tasks, and it'll work

No, what is ifttt? I've tried multiple commands on Google like "hey Google turn on the lights and set the heat to 72" but it didn't work obviously.

 

[Gaspode67]

No, what is ifttt? I've tried multiple commands on Google like "hey Google turn on the lights and set the heat to 72" but it didn't work obviously.

It's shorthand for IF This Then That. It's a free web service that allows you to create applets to automate tasks, hook multiple actions to the same trigger etc. You can find it here. Log into it with your Google ID, and you can browse existing applets that people have written and create your own. For instance, I created three applets all with the trigger phrase of "I'm going up to bed". One turns on the bedroom lights, the second turns off the living room lights, and a third dims the stairs lights. It's important to use the same trigger phrase and have the same response to all the applets you want to run together. It's not limited to voice commands either. I have one applet that triggers when I've been away from the house and come within 100m of it on my return, where it turns on the living room lights. There's also a lot of common applets such as when you post something on Instagram, it posts the full picture in Twitter too (rather than just a link as the normal instagram app post to twitter control does). It works with Google Assistant, Alexa, certain iOS functions (but not Siri), and a whole host of different services, apps, home appliance systems, etc.