Echo Dots!

Brianna and I really like our Amazon Echos. Recently a smaller, cheaper version has become widely available, called the Echo Dot. We bought three Dots for less than the cost of an original Amazon Echo.

I put one in the basement, and one in the nursery. I moved the full-sized Echo that we had in the master bedroom down to the Great Room on the first floor. I had special plans for the new Dot in the Master Bedroom.

Our home came with an old, broken security system. I have removed just about all the old security system components, but I left the control panel in the Master Bedroom since I didn't have a good idea for what to do with the hole in the wall behind it. Now, I did.

I touched up the paint:

And I used my 3D printer to print myself a copy of an Echo Dot wall mount:

It took a little fiddling, but I got the mount on the wall, and spliced a micro usb cable onto the old security system wiring:

Unsurprisingly, the 5 volt power supply that came with the Dot was not sufficient to power the Dot from down in the basement (where the security wiring re-emerges from the walls). I pulled my variable power supply off the shelf, and found that 6 volts was enough to power the Dot. I will replace the variable power supply with something more permanent in the near future.

All in all, I think it looks pretty good! And this one will never be buried under the stuff that seems to accumulate on the dresser :-)

Cheap Smart Switches

Someone at an Amazon warehouse must have dropped a pallet or something. They were selling what seemed like quite a few smart dimmers at half price (which was already 40% list price) due to damaged packaging. I picked up three - the first two arrived today.

The boxes are definitely damaged, but the original seals were intact, and the switches looked perfect when I pulled them out. I'm pretty happy!

Voice Controlled Lights with Amazon Echo and OpenHAB

I finally got OpenHAB running again. It required four minor version software upgrades installed across three computers, but it's working again.

Once OpenHAB was running again, it was pretty easy to get the Amazon Echo to control the kitchen lights (primarily using this guide). I can add more switches, but I have to do it one at a time and there's only one smart switch in the kitchen (where the Echo is) right now.

Glad to have forward motion on home automation again! There are two more switches to upgrade in the kitchen, and I think I can make them all voice-controlled as a group :-)

Amazon Echo!

My Amazon Echo arrived today!

It doesn't look very impressive, but I think it sounds better than the smartphone speaker dock that used to be in that spot.

I'm pretty impressed with the voice recognition - Siri couldn't pick me up from more than 2 or 3 feet away, but the Echo has responded to every prompt made within line-of-sight, regardless of distance (within the confines of the house, anyway), and has only mis-understood a couple of commands thus far.

Amazon's music service has been pretty good so far, and all my Audible audiobooks are also available. I'm going to have to see if there's a way to integrate my podcasts (beyond standard bluetooth tethering).

I really like the shopping list feature - I had the web interface open when I verbally told the Echo to add milk to the shopping list - it was dang close to instantaneous.

As for home automation, the Echo supports Wemo and Phillips Hue currently. I don't have either of those, but there's already a Wemo emulator available online that I can run side-by-side with my OpenHAB installation - in theory. I'll have to play with that in the near future - it will be pretty cool to control the lights by voice :-)

Automatic Feeder for the Dog

Our dog Eva is (theoretically) on a diet following her last vet appointment. However, between me and Brianna, it's more common for Eva to get fed twice or not at all (the food dish is almost always empty, regardless of how often she's fed).

So, I used an Amazon gift card and ordered an automatic pet feeder.

The Amazon reviews assured me there was a port for an AC power adapter (the feeder is nominally battery powered) even though I would have to order the actual power adapter separately.

I was lied to.

So, I drilled a hole in the housing and wired in the power adapter myself. Works great!

Amazon Echo with Home Automation

Developer makes Amazon's Echo control Wink and Nest devices

Booyah!

If the Echo can work with Wink, it can be made to work with OpenHAB. Having to "open" apps for home control is annoying, though. Maybe when Amazon is ready to release this publicly, commands can just be issued directly, without the intervening step of opening an app.

Amazon Echo - Ordered.

I posted about the Amazon Echo when it was announced back in November. I didn't order one then, but I speculated that it could be pretty cool for home automation. Well, today Amazon announced that the Echo integrated with the Wemo and Phillips Hue platforms, and someone else made a messy hack to control their Wink Hub via the Echo. Amazon is also working on releasing a public SDK that I have high hopes for.

The Echo supposedly retails for $200 for people without Amazon Prime memberships, though I have a hard time believing anyone actually paid $200 rather than sign up for a free Amazon Prime trial. Yesterday was the last day for Prime members to buy the Echo for $100 (it jumped to $150 today). Yesterday I still wasn't convinced I wanted to make the purchase, but I locked in the option for a 7 day period. Today the news broke about Wemo and Hue, and I decided to go for it.

I just bought a bunch of Zwave switches (post about that should be up in the next couple of weeks), though, so my fun money budget was pretty tight. So I signed up for an Amazon credit card, which came with a $70 Amazon credit sign-up bonus. I applied that sign up bonus to the $100 purchase price, and wound up paying $30 out-of-pocket for the Echo! It's hard to get a decent bluetooth speaker for $30, so I'm pretty happy with that deal.

Unfortunately, Amazon is waaaay backordered on the Echos. Mine isn't scheduled to ship until June or July. :-/

Amazon Echo

Amazon announced their "Echo" product last week. It is an odd device: a WiFi-connected microphone and speaker with a sort of AI interface similar to Apple's Siri.

My first thought was - why not just use Siri? With iOS 8, iPhones listen for the trigger phrase "Hey Siri" when plugged into power. So I tried it. I updated an old iPhone 4S to iOS 8.1, plugged it into a powered speaker dock, and started talking at it.

Now granted, the speaker dock partially blocked the iPhone's microphone, but performance was pretty dismal. I had to be within three feet and raise my voice to get consistent acknowledgement, and even then the voice recognition was not all that great.

Amazon is claiming that the Echo's array of seven microphones will allow you to talk to it from accross the room, with accurate voice recognition. There's really no way to test that until the Echo starts shipping, but it's a fairly dubious claim.

Being able to accurately tell a speaker like this to play music using only voice commands is mildly interesting. The only really interesting advertised feature is verbally adding items to a shopping list. But that's not worth two hundred dollars to me.

But what if, what if, Amazon has included Z-wave and Zigbee antennas inside this thing? If this turns out to be a reliably voice-activated smart home controller, well...

Well, I would buy at least three.

"Echo, turn off the lights and shut down the house. It's bed time."