I don’t like hunting through multiple apps to turn off a light in my house. Therefore, I’ve been trying to get everything centralized in the Wink app. When it comes to managing Philips Hue lights, the Wink can turn them on and off, as well as change the percentage that a bulb is lit, acting as a dimmer. Philips Hue lights run through a bridge, known as the Hue Bridge. This device bridges the Wi-fi network and allows the Philips Hue app to control your lights. Once your Hue lights are configured, open the Wink app and tap on Add a Product. At the Add a Product screen, tap on Lights.…
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Control A Wink From Alexa
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…
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Connect Amazon Echo To An iHeartRadio Account
The Amazon Echo can’t control a FireTV. I guess they’re different groups at Amazon. And not all the music you want is available on Amazon Prime. Royalties, contracts, etc being what they are, sometimes Amazon can’t find something you want. But, even if an artist or song isn’t available, you can often hook into a channel that fills the void on iHeartRadio. So, let’s connect the two. To get started, you’ll want to log into http://alexa.amazon.com. Then, click on Music & Books and then scroll down to the listing for iHeartRadio and click on the logo. If you haven’t linked an account, you’ll only have the option to “Link your account now”…
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Alexa, Order Me A Pizza
Domino’s is arguably not the best pizza in the world. But it’s pizza. And, if you have an Amazon Echo, you can order it without opening an app, touching a keyboard, or making a phone call. This makes for a great look at using one of the skills options in Alexa to extend the usefulness of an Echo. To do so, you’ll first setup a Domino’s account (aka Pizza Profile). Do that at Dominos.com (avoiding any conflicts with the Noid along the way). Also setup an Easy Order, which is the kind of pizza that Alexa will order each time you tell her to do so. Once done, you’ll need…
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Connect Amazon Echo To Spotify
Do you have a Premium Spotify account? Before you start this, please note that only Premium Spotify accounts can be linked to Amazon Echo. To link your Spotify account to an Amazon Echo, first open http://alexa.amazon.com and then click on Music & Books. Then, click on Spotify under the Music section. When prompted, click on “Link your account” Click Log In To Spotify (unless you don’t have an account, then click “Sign up for Spotify” to setup an account) I use my Facebook account for Spotify, so I’ll click “Log in with Facebook” Then, grant access when prompted. Now, you can say “Alexa, play Halloween mix on Spotify” and you’ll hear…
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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…
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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:…
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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…
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How Does Your Page Rank?
There are a number of services that rank web sites. I find that I check alexa.com here and there. So as you employ various techniques to make your site better, you can check back and see the long term impacts of how these efforts impact your ranking. You can also see demographics of visitors. And you can see geographic data as well. There are other better sites, with far more detailed information such as Google Analytics. But a very top-level, upper level view of how your site is performing is something like Alexa.com. Nice and simple.