With the holidays coming up, smart speakers are likely at the top of the wishlists for the technically inclined. These days, smart speakers are a central component of the smart home. But before choosing a smart speaker, you have to decide on a smart-home platform, with the top three being Amazon Alexa, Apple Home/Siri, or Google Home/Assistant.
We have the Amazon Echos to help control our smart home, because the dot was on sale 
but it has served us well, and we added a couple more since that first one. The one in the rec room is a slightly bigger sphere (still a dot, I think?) to get better music quality, and we got a Show for the display and camera, meant for the cottage but because it ties so closely to our home system we decided to keep it at home. We never use the camera, but the display is a nice addition.
When not directly being used it shows us random pictures from a folder of photos we added, and things like weather... seems weirdly random and I wish I knew how to tune what it shows. It's probably possible. Maybe one day I'll spend the time to figure it out.
We do use them all the time, but mostly for on-demand control like "turn off the bedroom lights", "turn on the christmas tree" or "turn on the corner light". And of course for playing music. It does a great job of playing music through a Sonos speaker we keep in the living room.
Our devices are half Z-Wave and half WiFi. The Z-Wave were given to us by our electrical supplier (BC Hydro) as part of a study years ago, which started us on the road to home automations. Since then I've added a few dozen WiFi plugs and switches.
Most of the WiFi devices are controlled with the SmartLife App, which allows devices from various makers to be controlled in just one app. Some are TP-Link, I think there's an accidental other one I thought was SmartLife but turned out to be specialized.
The BC Hydro app controls the Z-Wave devices.
Most of our automations are directly from the main apps, and are generally to turn on outside lights at sundown, and turn them off later at night. That's convenient in general, but also serves as a bit of security.
All of them connect through to Alexa, which allows for an extra bit of automation and on-demand control.
Maybe one of the best features we use the automations for is to slowly turn on lights in the morning for a gentle wake-up 
My wife uses Alexa to play music in the morning as an alarm for those times when we have to get up earlier. Very convenient - just blurt out "alexa, wake me up at 7am with the song 'xxx'"
We have the Amazon Echos to help control our smart home, because the dot was on sale but it has served us well, and we added a couple more since that first one. The one in the rec room is a slightly bigger sphere (still a dot, I think?) to get better music quality, and we got a Show for the display and camera, meant for the cottage but because it ties so closely to our home system we decided to keep it at home. We never use the camera, but the display is a nice addition.
When not directly being used it shows us random pictures from a folder of photos we added, and things like weather... seems weirdly random and I wish I knew how to tune what it shows. It's probably possible. Maybe one day I'll spend the time to figure it out.
We do use them all the time, but mostly for on-demand control like "turn off the bedroom lights", "turn on the christmas tree" or "turn on the corner light". And of course for playing music. It does a great job of playing music through a Sonos speaker we keep in the living room.
Our devices are half Z-Wave and half WiFi. The Z-Wave were given to us by our electrical supplier (BC Hydro) as part of a study years ago, which started us on the road to home automations. Since then I've added a few dozen WiFi plugs and switches.
Most of the WiFi devices are controlled with the SmartLife App, which allows devices from various makers to be controlled in just one app. Some are TP-Link, I think there's an accidental other one I thought was SmartLife but turned out to be specialized.
The BC Hydro app controls the Z-Wave devices.
Most of our automations are directly from the main apps, and are generally to turn on outside lights at sundown, and turn them off later at night. That's convenient in general, but also serves as a bit of security.
All of them connect through to Alexa, which allows for an extra bit of automation and on-demand control.
Maybe one of the best features we use the automations for is to slowly turn on lights in the morning for a gentle wake-up
My wife uses Alexa to play music in the morning as an alarm for those times when we have to get up earlier. Very convenient - just blurt out "alexa, wake me up at 7am with the song 'xxx'"
