Re: Amazon Echo arrives in France
Posted: Thu 25 Oct 2018 17:31
Thanks. I should have checked.
If I was rewiring the place from scratch, I’d have smart wall switches (almost) everywhere. As it is, it’s probably easier and cheaper for me to talk to Alexa at the level of the bulb, or in a few places through in-line switches down-circuit from the wall switches (they also come up on your Google search).
As it is, I have already bought a couple of the in-line switches, though I didn’t yet know what to do with them, mostly because I hadn’t realised that you can make them switch even when Alexa is dead (or at least in a coma). I should have guessed that you could do it, and how, but thanks again for reminding me.
All I have to do now is find where a few cables run in the ceiling void. Or probably get the electrician to do it (among a few other things): he might remember.
I still can’t help feeling that it’s a bit decadent to switch things on and off from my settee, or my bed, via Amazon’s server a few hundreds or thousands of kms away, rather than budging a metre or two to do it myself. But I’m getting used to it. And it is a bit green: I switch my bedroom lights off now when I might previously have left them on because my hands were full (“after all, they are only 7W each”).
If I was rewiring the place from scratch, I’d have smart wall switches (almost) everywhere. As it is, it’s probably easier and cheaper for me to talk to Alexa at the level of the bulb, or in a few places through in-line switches down-circuit from the wall switches (they also come up on your Google search).
As it is, I have already bought a couple of the in-line switches, though I didn’t yet know what to do with them, mostly because I hadn’t realised that you can make them switch even when Alexa is dead (or at least in a coma). I should have guessed that you could do it, and how, but thanks again for reminding me.
All I have to do now is find where a few cables run in the ceiling void. Or probably get the electrician to do it (among a few other things): he might remember.
I still can’t help feeling that it’s a bit decadent to switch things on and off from my settee, or my bed, via Amazon’s server a few hundreds or thousands of kms away, rather than budging a metre or two to do it myself. But I’m getting used to it. And it is a bit green: I switch my bedroom lights off now when I might previously have left them on because my hands were full (“after all, they are only 7W each”).