Wondering how to make your home smart with Alexa?
How it can change your current life-style?
You are at the right place!
The guide will help you understand: what is a smart home and how you can make your home smart with Alexa?
If you are new to the term smart home and do not exactly understand what are the key components of a smart home? Then we highly recommend you go through this introductory article on smart home and smart home devices
Before proceeding to how you can make your homes smart with Alexa or starting discussion about Alexa smart home ideas. Let us understand what exactly is Alexa?
What is Alexa?
Amazon Alexa or Alexa is basically a virtual assistant technology developed by Amazon. The main feature of this virtual Assistant is its voice recognition ability. Alexa can understand voice commands and accordingly generate instructions for other devices connected to it.
In very simple words Alexa acts as the brain of connected devices and direct them to work according to your instructions. Most of the time these instructions are voice based.
What is Smart Home?
Smart home is a home where all the devices are connected to each other through a medium that in most cases is Wi-Fi. These devices are then controlled from a central point for optimal functionality.
If you are worried about your privacy, do not forget to read this article on security and privacy for virtual assistants.
How to make your home a smart home with Alexa?
The basic concept of making your home smart with Alexa is, Alexa comes up with the built in technology to understand voice instructions. So to make home smart we can connect all the smart devices in the home with Alexa. Most of the times these devices are connected with the help of a mobile app.
Once the smart devices are connected we can issue verbal instructions to Alexa about how to make these devices work? For example Alexa turn on the lights, play song from you tube and so on.
So the simple answer to question to how to make your home a smart home with Alexa? is connect all your smart devices to Alexa. Alexa has voice recognition technology therefore your can easily control the operations of all smart devices in your home with easy voice instructions.
What are the Key components for making your home smart with Alexa?
Components of a smart home Alexa can help with are:
- Security
- Lighting
- Thermostats
Smart Home Security with Alexa
We all know how vital security cameras are for the safety of any house. With the help of smart cameras you can easily monitory activities inside and outside your house where cameras are placed.
These smart cameras can easily be connected to the Alexa. The connection allows you to not only view footages but also switch between camera views just with verbal commands.
Smart Home Lighting with Alexa
If smart lights in home are connected to Alexa they can easily be controlled just by voice. You can turn them on, off, change colours or ask them to dim when needed. You can even turn them on if you are away from home to give impression that someone is in home.
With the help of routines you can even set them to turn on and off etc. in accordance with the pre-established schedule.
Smart Home Thermostats with Alexa
Heating and cooling are two of the major costs among routine expenses. With the help of smart thermostats you can turn on heating and cooling even if you are away.
Asking your heating system to start functioning when you are 15 minutes away from home is much more cost effective model then letting heating work all day.
Conclusion and Summary
If you ask us how to make your home a smart home with Alexa?
There are thousands of options and smart devices available in the market that are compatible with Alexa. You can use any of them depending on your needs. However, it is important to check compatibility before you order something. We have shared some of our favourite ones.
Our advice is to go through this article ultimate guide of Building smart home from start to finish. This will increase your understanding about smart home and smart devices and help you decide which smart devices to buy for your home. This article also provides suggestions for cheaper ways to make existing appliances smart. Further, you will get the ideas about where to start when you decide to make your home smart.
Worried about privacy? Read this article: on security and privacy for virtual assistants.
