Voice controlled home automation thingy

homie

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There was a guy on the radio a while back talking about all this. He said he realised he had taken it a bit too far once when his house emailed him at work to tell him his burglar alarm had been triggered and there was an intruder in the house. He patched into his CCTV using his smart phone and what had set the alarm off? - His automatic vacuum cleaner.

I just keep thinking maybe a Terminator Judgment day type scenario isn't completely out of the question, one day in the distant future.

I'm something of a luddite myself and the more of this automated technology we get, the more I seem to dislike it.

"How about a nice game of chess?"
 

Topaz

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I got an email when on holiday in July, telling me that my home CCTV had activated. I checked on my phone, and it was a moth, which had been attracted to the light on the camera! My heart skipped a beat when I got the email, I'll tell you.
 

katykicker

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For me I think this types of things are mostly useful for disabled people or if you want to help an elderly relative.

I've got two Sonos' and I LOVE them. Perfect for us.
 

JamesinSpenny

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I have worked with computers all my life and what you have to realise is that it is listening to everything you say for it to work. If you look at your network activity when you speak to it you will see it is sending it out side your house but to where, also having all your appliances basically on standby all the time is not very eco-friendly or cheap.
 

Dazza

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I have a couple of Hue bulbs (one colour and one white) and also a couple of Echo Dots. Have added the Hue skill and the Alexa app has picked up all the bulbs, scenes, rooms etc. from the Hue hub, so I can turn the lights on and off and change the colour using the Dot. The room that the colour bulb is in has a Hue dimmer switch on the wall so you can still have that switching on and off option - you can also use the dimmer switch to set the bulb to a certain scene depending on how many times one of the buttons is pressed. With the correct app disco mode is great with the colour bulb, it changes colour and pulsates to the music - great for kids.
I also like being able to turn the bulbs on or off remotely and setting certain schedules when away - the schedules can be set to act randomly, so basically it the bulb won't come on at the same time each time, there will be a bit of randomness about it. I believe that the Hue hub can be used to control the bulbs from IKEA as well which are cheaper then the Philips bulbs.

Cheers,

D
 

mabozza

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On this... i came in from work late last night and was watching a film on telly well was dozing anyway an ad came on telly and next thing i know the google home fired up full volume playing billy ocean!! Startled doesnt begin lol
 

Jon

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We've been playing around with Amazon Echo's at work today.

The thing works FAR better than i thought it would!

Alexa, play Radio 1 etc. all work fine!
 

homie

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So how long is it going to be until one of the car manufacturers installs one of those in a car and makes it look and talk like this?

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mabozza

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We've been playing around with Amazon Echo's at work today.

The thing works FAR better than i thought it would!

Alexa, play Radio 1 etc. all work fine!
You should try that thing with a strong accent, absolutely hopeless (but funny.. asking the time it tells us all about Scots Pine)
 

Jon

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See people at work speak with the most broad yorkshire / leeds accent going and are able to work with Alexa absolutely fine...
 

Jon

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Well I got a fair amount of vouchers for Christmas and am now looking at buy an amazon dot but can I find them in stock anywhere can i heck!!

@katykicker and @Chammy seem very happy with theirs and I want in!!

Not even Amazon has them in stock until mid Jan!!

WHAT SORT OF CRAZINESS IS THIS!!
 

Chammy

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We're loving ours. Lots of fun and I like having a decent speaker in the kitchen for while I cook/clean etc.

I'm thinking about investing in a couple of Dots for upstairs too.
 

Topaz

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Haha I don't think my Alexa will ever be part of an A.I takeover - she's too dumb! 'Sorry, I don't know the answer to that question!' Sometimes I have to ask the same question three times before she understands, but that might be my west country accent, my luvver ;)
But, she understands what's being said when the T.V. adverts come on OK. She tries ordering cat food - we don't have a cat, or calling some random family member, or turning the lights off. Thankfully I haven't set up stuff like that, so she can't.............or can she?
 

SparklyMum

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I just wish they'd stop putting the Alexa ads on TV. They keep waking up ours and she very haughtily tells us that if we want to order cat food, we have to enable her ability to add things to our Amazon basket. Or the ad where they tell her to turn on the lights..............'sorry I can't do that right now'. Please enable the whatever it is skill. It was amusing at first, now we rush for the remote to mute the ads. Of course, we could always change her name to Echo or Amazon and solve the problem that way, but where's the fun in that ;)

Haha, me too as my daughter has the same name
 

Hezzy

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Haha, me too as my daughter has the same name
We have changed the name of ours to echo but it still sets off randomly -I think home automation has a long way to,go. Plus if the network has an outage in the area then nothing works until it’s all rebooted.
 

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