[Elspode]

I just took my first halting steps into home automation based on Amazon Echo. Now I can tell Alexa to turn on/dim white lights in three locations that were previously inconvenient due to the location of the lights versus our location in the bedroom. I give it a rating of "Fuck, Yeah!".

I will expand this layout one bulb at a time. We were converting to LEDs anyway, and 60 watt equivalent bulbs controllable through the Zigbee 2.4ghz technology can be had as cheap as $15, which is only about 33% more than dumb LED bulbs. With a 30,000 hour lifespan, I will die before these bulbs will, so once installed, I'm done.

The ability to use color changing bulbs is cool, but probably not terribly important to our lifestyle. If we go that route, it will likely be strip lights, which can be up to 1600 lumens - a likely solution for a dark hallway in our house, and then we would sort of have that color changing function come along inherently.

Still pondering the automated power outlet thing. Wife isn't sure we need to be able to voice control turning our TV on and off, but we have a couple of groovy lamps that don't seem to want to fit the bulbs, so this could be a solution that allows us to continue using those lamps while having them automated, and perhaps even dimable.

My operative notion is that this tech is only going to grow and expand, and become less expensive, so getting in early is a good idea. I'd like to think we will eventually be able to voice control our media gear, but as we have Google Fiber TV and Internet, and as Google has their own platform, compatibility and crossover with that may be slow to come.

Cool stuff.