REVIEW - Amazon Echo Dot / Alexa

Cue

Well-Known Forumite
I'd like an Alexa for doing the bins, emptying the cats' dirt boxes, making me a cup of tea, washing up etc etc. I can dream...........

WiFi dishwasher? And there’s an automatic cat litter tray around somewhere too...

I’ve just bought my last two Phillips Hue bulbs. Entire house is now kitted out where possible. At some point I’ll do something with the GU10 fittings but the GU10 Hue bulbs are too pricey for my liking.
 

Cue

Well-Known Forumite
Still think wifi switches would be better than bulbs.

They would. But most UK houses don’t have a 3 wire lightswitch outside of COM lines as the neutral is up top, so cannot easily work with smart switches as they need constant power - something that isn’t terribly easy when they turn the power off. That plus having very shallow backboxes which makes WiFi switches impractical. I have a Fibaro module that simply wouldn’t fit and you also had to put a semi-intelligent resistor in the circuit for LEDs
 

Glam

Mad Cat Woman
I'd like an Alexa for doing the bins, emptying the cats' dirt boxes, making me a cup of tea, washing up etc etc. I can dream...........
It's your fault, you could have chosen that name when you were filling in his birth certificate.
I can't remember the last time 'Jesus' made me a cup of tea.
You need a wife.
Not that way.
Or an au pair.

No chance. I have a hormonal 26yr old here.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
@Cue - the wifi switches I use simply cut into a live and neutral to any item. I've done my ceiling light directly at the fitting rather than through the wall switch. £.5.50 and when the bulb blows it costs me a standard replacement bulb as it would have done previously.

I know what you mean about wifi wall switches though. All these places like Maplin sell them yet they can't even be used in a UK home without an electrician dropping a neutral feed down to the wall box which can sometimes be an impossibility.
 

Rikki

Well-Known Forumite
Do you just control your lights by voice then and leave the switch turned on? Or have you wired a separate switch live from the Wi-Fi switch to the light?
 

Rikki

Well-Known Forumite
Just got one myself and would like to do our lights. But we have at least 3 bulbs in every room so it would be very expensive to change them.

Also do you know if you can get actual socket outlets rather than the inline plugs?
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
Just got one myself and would like to do our lights. But we have at least 3 bulbs in every room so it would be very expensive to change them.

Also do you know if you can get actual socket outlets rather than the inline plugs?

Bulbs are the issue here too, not paying out near enough £20 a bulb every time one dies! As for the outlets, I suspect you'd need a really deep back box?

Switch on 24th Dec 23.59, switch off 26th Dec 00.01 bah humbug :)

:P
 

Cue

Well-Known Forumite
@Cue - the wifi switches I use simply cut into a live and neutral to any item. I've done my ceiling light directly at the fitting rather than through the wall switch. £.5.50 and when the bulb blows it costs me a standard replacement bulb as it would have done previously.

I know what you mean about wifi wall switches though. All these places like Maplin sell them yet they can't even be used in a UK home without an electrician dropping a neutral feed down to the wall box which can sometimes be an impossibility.

There’s Lutron and Insteon that don’t need a neutral but they require buying into a whole ecosystem really. I do have a Sonoff for our garden lights but can’t really fit one up in the fitting without tearing the ceiling apart

Bulbs are the issue here too, not paying out near enough £20 a bulb every time one dies! As for the outlets, I suspect you'd need a really deep back box?

:P

Don’t buy smart outlets, there’s no point.

Bulbs have a warranty and will probably outlive all of us though. LEDs are very long life
 

Glam

Mad Cat Woman
Switch on 24th Dec 23.59, switch off 26th Dec 00.01 bah humbug :)
We did sumat like that just before we moved, way back in Christmas 1979. Put the tree up Christmas Eve, Took everything down Boxing Day. None of us were in a festive mood that year.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Just got one myself and would like to do our lights. But we have at least 3 bulbs in every room so it would be very expensive to change them. Also do you know if you can get actual socket outlets rather than the inline plugs?
  1. I missed this post sorry Rikki. Look at Sonoff wifi switches on eBay (a little over a fiver) and wire them directly into the flex of regular things like desk lamps etc. Far cheaper than using inline plugs and less bulky, and you can fit them at any point in the cable that will be easiest to keep them out of sight.
  2. If you can be bothered with the extra hassle they can be used for ceiling lights too - hidden away in the ceiling cavity. It means you can stick with regular bulbs. Just bear in mind that you'd want to program them on a mains wire at floor level first, before connecting them in place on the lights. Also, if you ever changed your wifi router it would be easier to change the new one to the same network name and key as the old one otherwise you'd have to go digging them all back out of the ceilings again.
 

Cue

Well-Known Forumite
  1. I missed this post sorry Rikki. Look at Sonoff wifi switches on eBay (a little over a fiver) and wire them directly into the flex of regular things like desk lamps etc. Far cheaper than using inline plugs and less bulky, and you can fit them at any point in the cable that will be easiest to keep them out of sight.
  2. If you can be bothered with the extra hassle they can be used for ceiling lights too - hidden away in the ceiling cavity. It means you can stick with regular bulbs. Just bear in mind that you'd want to program them on a mains wire at floor level first, before connecting them in place on the lights. Also, if you ever changed your wifi router it would be easier to change the new one to the same network name and key as the old one otherwise you'd have to go digging them all back out of the ceilings again.

Biggest problem with the Sonoff stuff is that their servers are slow as shit. Our garden lights are by far the slowest thing to turn off under our "Downstairs" group on Alexa. Everything else is very speedy. It also had a habit of disconnecting and I'd have to flip the garden breaker to reconnect it, but it seems to have stopped doing that now.

I need to get the firmware that enables local control over MQTT on there at some point.

Honestly though, I wouldn't go recommending putting it in the flex of cables. It has no ground so you'd have to ugly-wire the ground or just remove it completely on anything that actually has a ground. The TP-Link sockets are stupidly cheap when they go on offer so they're often a far better solution for the average user.
 
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