Hello!

Having recently bought an Amazon Echo Plus primarily for use as a smart speaker, not an AI assistant or a centre piece to home automation, simply as a speaker.

A bulb failed at home and I thought out of curiosity that I’ll replace it with the Philips Hue Bulb that came free with my Echo Plus. First impressions was that it was a warm colour rather than the bright white colour I’m assumed to.

Quickly went to the Amazon Alexa App and searched for a new device, was quite surprised when it came up straight away, I renamed it and added it to my living room group. Through it the app it works flawlessly was really impressed! The voice commands for make it dim or brighter are a bit clunky and I’m still not really sure what to say! But a simple on and off works well.

Rather impressed by this I decided to purchase another 2 bulb from Philips Hue and also 2 lamp bulbs from Innr, with the intention of adding these to my bedroom and landing upstairs. Here’s where it becomes interesting

Innr – I couldn’t get them to pair or to be seen by the Echo so I ended up sending them back

Philip Hue – Paired lovely to the Echo as previously really simple

The dilemma now comes with the mechanics of using these…If you are the only one in the household willing to make voice commands or use the smart app then you are in trouble…The light switch always has to be ‘ON’ if it’s not you cannot control your smart bulb, so what’s quite annoying is that your wife walks past presses the switch leaving me the home automation superstar the only option to get up put the switch back to on and then dim it…Obviously this doesn’t work. See my next post on my next adventure