One of my favorite options in the latest round of home automationry is the ability to voice control all the things. The Wink has a pretty substantial list of supported home automation devices. The Alexa can control the Wink. Therefore, the Alexa can do all the things, even though integrations with Alexa were not built for most of those devices by Amazon.
The beauty here lies in the ubiquity of APIs these days. Alexa has a recipe-style option called a Skill (further humanizing her). Basically, you add the Wink skill, then scan for devices that are connected through the Wink, then viola, tell Alexa to do something to them. To get started, open the Alexa app and tap on Skills. Search for Wink and then tap on Enable.
At the Wink screen, enter the username and password for your Wink account and then tap on Sign In.
Provided all goes well, you’ll then be told that Alexa linked with Wink (there’s a joke there… anyone?).
Alexa doesn’t know about your devices that are connected through Wink yet. So now tap on Discover Devices.
The app then shows all the devices connected. Mine will have about 20, but I’ve only got two setup for now.
From the Wink app, let’s add another device.
Then let’s tap Discover Devices again from the Alexa app.
Any new devices are then displayed.
Different devices have different voice commands. For example, a thermostat can change the temperature whereas a light switch can turn on and off, a dimmer can be set to a certain percentage of power, or a garage door opener can open a garage door. Now, if I can only find the dip-switch controlled coffee pot and hook it up to an automated receptacle so Alexa can make me a cup of coffee…