I try very hard to resist piling on when a tech company makes a tone-deaf call, but this time I simply can’t. Seriously Amazon, WTF? If you use Alexa, Echo, or any other Amazon device, you have only 10 days to opt out of an experiment that leaves your personal privacy and security hanging in the balance. On June 8, […]
Read moreFor my family, smart speakers like the Amazon Echo or Google Home are an essential part of how we interact with the home automation (HA) system, intercom between rooms, and casually listen to music. The privacy implications of this aren’t that concerning for us as I don’t think we’re interesting enough for Amazon, Google, the NSA, or really anyone else […]
Read moreWhen Amazon announced their new Echo Plus, I was immediately intrigued, and then a bit put off by the decision to use Zigbee instead of Z-Wave (although both radios would have been better). Afterall, Z-Wave has the biggest pool of devices and [near] guarenteed compatiblity. Aparently I’m not the only one who doesn’t get the choice – CEPro just does […]
Read moreIf you have an Amazon Echo (or Echo Dot) you can now natively control your Logitech Harmony Smart Hub via a “Skill”. It is US only for the moment (suck), but I was able to have a brief play with it anyway (shhh). Overall, it’s nice that it’s there. But, lacks some of the flexibility avaiable with ha-bridge integration (e.g. […]
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I recently installed ha-bridge to expose my custom switches and those from my Harmony and Vera systems to the Amazon Echo. One of the challenges I ran across was that the Linux (VM) system that I want to host the app on is Ubuntu, and the installation instructions didn’t cover that. Now, this isn’t a complex task, but there was […]
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I’m not sure exactly why my wife came home with a cheap (£10-15) set of 433MHz remote controlled switches. While I gave her some grief initially, I’m glad she did. Because for a few £ more we now have four “smart” IP switches that can be controlled from a home automation controller (HAC). And since we have an Amazon Echo, […]
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