• Alexa,  Home Automation

    Connect Amazon Echo (Alexa) to IFTTT

    IFTTT makes the possibilities practically endless for what you can do with an Amazon Echo running Alexa. IFTTT provides workflows that connect Alexa to many of the most popular cloud services on the Internet. For example, Alexa can make a spreadsheet of all the songs you listen to using your Prime account, Email you a shopping list, sync To-Dos to Evernote, find your phone, set reminders on your phone, extend Alexa to manage your TV using Harmony, run Wink shortcuts, print files, manage a Wemo bulb (Belkin), control otherwise unsupported thermostats, control items within apps (e.g. make all your Hue lights a given color), time things (e.g. turn on the air conditioning for an…

  • Alexa,  Home Automation

    Manage Alarms On Amazon Echo

    One of those fun things that Alexa can do is set alarms for you. I usually sleep around 4 or 5 hours a night, so no amount of alarms is enough to roust me out of bed. Therefore, adding Alexa on my Amazon Echo to the extensive list of alarms I have around my house is welcome. Let’s look at some things you can tell Alexa to do for ya’, when it comes to alarms. First, let’s set an alarm for noon: “Alexa, set an alarm for noon tomorrow.” Alexa will then repeat back the alarm she just configured. Now, let’s setup a repeating alarm for every Tuesday morning at 6am:…

  • Alexa,  Home Automation

    Play Audible Books On Your Amazon Echo

    The Amazon Echo is a great device for accessing content using a Prime membership. But the Echo is also useful for media that isn’t sourced from Prime. One of these is Audible, which makes sense, given that Audible is owned by Amazon. I found that my Audible account was around before it was linked to an Amazon account with Prime. In order to link the account, I needed to open the Alexa website and link my Audible account. To do so, open http://alexa.amazon.com. Then click on Music & Books in the sidebar. Then click on Audible and either you will see your Audible books, or you will be able to provide…

  • Apps,  Home Automation

    Change the Language On Your Nest Protect

    Last night, I went to setup a new Nest Protect in my home, and while I was futzing with the app (yes, futzing is the technical term) I missed the question that was asked on the device about what language to use while waiting at this screen. And so my Nest Protect was speaking Spanish. Which is fine with me; but notsofine for my daughter. So, I needed to change the language. And after hunting for the setting for awhile, I thought: self, you should document this. So to change the language on a Nest protect, open the Nest app and then tap on the icon for Protect (which will…

  • Home Automation,  iPhone,  Mac OS X

    Which Apple TV Works With My TV?

    I recently purchased a new TV (actually won, but that’s aside from the point). I put the DirecTV receiver on there and it worked like a charm. Then I put the Apple TV on and it appeared to work like a charm. But when the screensaver kicked in, the colors inverted. Sometimes I’d see lines across the screen and other times the Apple TV would get weird and just be blurry. I knew immediately that I was sending it too much. Turns out the new TV couldn’t do less than 1080p and the old Apple TV couldn’t do anything higher than 720p. To confirm, I looked up the serial number.…

  • Home Automation

    Change Subtitle Language In Netflix On AppleTV

    My daughter is always finding features I’d never heard of. I’m sitting there, watching the Katy Perry movie with her. She hits some random buttons on the Apple TV remote and a screen comes up and then disappears as quickly as it appeared. A screen I’ve never noticed… Flash forward to later in the day and suddenly the subtitles for Lillyhammer are in Spanish. Now, my Spanish just isn’t as good as it used to be. So here I’m wanting to switch it to English. But, where’s the setting? I finally found it by browsing to Settings, then Audio & Video. Then browse to Closed Captioning and switch it to…

  • Home Automation

    Integrate WeMo with IFTTT

    Part II. In Part I we setup those little WeMo units you just got. Now, we’re gonna’  connect our WeMo devices to IFTTT. Short for If This Then That, IFTTT allows you to connect lots of different services to other services so that you can trigger events between services. For example, you can connect WeMo to Facebook so when you come home from work the motion sensor posts to Facebook. I don’t recommend that, but it’s an example. A better example is to trigger a change in the weather from your thermostat. Wait, I mean, change the thermostat based on the weather… Anyway, the more things you connect to IFTTT…

  • Home Automation

    Quick and Easy Home Automation For Christmas Lights

    OK, if you’ve been following this site for awhile you probably know that I’m a huge z-wave nerd. But I’m open minded and I like to experiment with new systems. So I bought some Belkin WeMo stuff. I am mostly pretty happy with it. To start, it came in a cute little box. You can just get the light switch, but I splurged the extra $5 and got the little motion sensor, which is well worth $5. I got mine at Best Buy who has a couple of WeMo products in stock at the stores around my house. First up, install the WeMo app on your iOS device from the…

  • Home Automation,  Mac OS X,  Minneapolis,  sites

    Control the Weather Using Curl

    Wait, did I say control, I meant query… Sorry to disappoint! I am a home automation nerd. Recently I’ve noticed that as it gets closer to warmer or cooler extremes that it takes longer for my hvac system to bring my house to the temperature I want. I’ve also noticed that NEST claims to automatically learn these factors. Not to be outdone by the Griswolds, I decided to look at building this into my system. I had been experimenting with using the weather.com site to pull this data but then someone pointed out that NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) actually publishes this information on their site. I was…