Automating the Home

Last Christmas the girlfriend asked for an Echo Dot. At the time I thought the regular Echo was ridiculously over-priced and the Dot just plain dumb — why can’t any of them act as a Bluetooth speakerphone?! — but I got her one anyways because who am I to judge spending money on silly gadgets.

At first she used it for reminders, timers, music, and audible books in the kitchen. Then she steadily expanded with another Dot in her bedroom, a Wink hub, some TP-Link outlets, and assorted smart bulbs to about a half-dozen lamps / fixtures in her home.

Now, for practically my whole adult life I’ve used a couple of cheap GE remote-controlled outlets for the lamps in my bedroom so that I’m not getting into bed in the dark or fumbling around for a lamp’s on / off switch. Every time I’ve looked into changing over to something more advanced I’ve felt it wasn’t worth the expense nor the hassle…

But the girlfriend’s setup has grown on me. HA products keep getting simpler and cheaper and Alexa’s capabilities keep expanding. The tipping point for me was Alexa Smart Home Device Groups and discovering the 8-pack of Sengled ZHA bulbs. The Sengled’s have had coupons for 15-30% off for the holidays, bringing them as low as $6.50/ea — making it cheaper to upgrade my fixtures with smart bulbs than smart switches, plus saving me the the hassle of messing with electrical wiring in a home that I’m not planning to live in much longer.

My hardware assemblage so far:

Originally I wanted SmartThings + Echo Plus figuring I wouldn’t be able to cover my house and detached garage / office / theater from one hub, but ST is doing the job just fine despite not being in the best position. I’ve deployed one of the Hue Color kits in the master bedroom and several Sengled bulbs in the office, with Echos for each plus another in the kitchen. Over my holiday stay-catation I’ll be deploying the rest — an Echo for each living space and bulbs in the most used fixtures / lamps.

I may still decide to wire in a few smart relays for my outdoor lights — getting them on a schedule is highly appealing, and they really demand local control that preserves automation. Best as I can tell, nobody makes outdoor-rated smart bulbs yet.

And maybe some motion sensors to activate the stairway and upstairs hallway lights.


Going through all of this, I find myself wishing that Ubiquiti hadn’t screwed the pooch on mFi. The vision was there… but they basically made every wrong decision possible when it came to execution. I hope they’ll take another crack at it some day while embracing open standards and connectivity.

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