A few months ago I bought an Alexa because I thought it’d be a laugh. Indeed the kids have had a lot of fun out of the Alexa do a fart skill (amusing the first handful of times, then … not so much) and Alexa tell me a joke (someone’s raided the Dad Jokes cupboard) but there was no killer-app even though the Alexa tell Blackadder I have a cunning plan is also amusing.
Then the Sonos skill came out and Alexa play Radio 4 in the Kitchen became feasible (or Heart London or … err, there are no other choices are there? 
) or in some other Sonos’d-up room of your choice. You’d think this isn’t a huge deal but it’s actually dead handy when you’re in the kitchen and don’t want to get the touchscreen remote sticky!
Mine’s got into some weird state where it always thinks there’s something playing in the bedroom so Alexa stop always asks which room to stop but always fails to stop whatever it thinks is playing in the bedroom. Investigation required. But can I be ar*ed? Sigh.
And then Christmas rolled around so my old networked plug came out along with the lights for the shed. In previous years I’ve controlled the switch via an app on my phone (which, it has to be said, wasn’t always entirely reliable). This year I wanted to go a step further - Alexa control.
S20 Orvibo plug
This is the networked plug I’ve had for a couple of years and isn’t immediately controllable via Alexa. But I don’t like shirking from a technical challenge … well, not until it’s got to that oh f*ck it, I give up on this stupid sh*t point of needing a beer or three. A quick google showed it is controllable via a Raspberry Pi with HA-Bridge and OpenHAB2 
They’re not the most user-friendly of apps but I was up and running controlling the switch within an hour or so.
TP-Link HS100 / HS110
I bought the HS110 as it was on offer on Black Friday. Or Cyber Monday. Or something. It’s a networked plug that measures energy consumption - which I thought would be interesting. The HS100 (same as HS110 but no energy measurements) I bought a couple of weeks later as I liked the HS110 … but it was a mistake - I meant to buy another HS110 but selected the wrong thing. Damnit.
Grouping
Alexa allows smart home devices to be grouped so it was trivial to put all three plugs in a single group so I can control them with a single voice command - Alexa turn on the Christmas lights now turns on three sets of lights: the outside ones on the shed, the string in the dining room and of course the multitude on our tree. Of course Alexa turn off the Christmas lights also features.
What else?
The proliferation of different ways to watch TV in our house means it can be confusing for some people (cough my wife) to turn on the TV, etc. to watch Netflix / Sky / Amazon Prime / BBC iPlayer / a DVD…
So I thought I’d experiment with a Logitech Harmony Elite. This is basically a WiFi remote with a static IR / bluetooth hub that can be set up to control all manner of devices. My living room kit is pretty run-of-the-mill so I didn’t expect any problems with it. Except for the cheapo HDMI switch I’ve got … but the Harmony database even contained controls for that. Great: five remotes down to one.
Integration with Alexa is also trivial - Alexa turn on Netflix will (via a Harmony activity) switch on the TV, switch to the appropriate HDMI input, turn on the Apple TV, switch the HDMI switch to the appropriate input, fiddle around with buttons until it gets to Netflix then hits select. Which all means if you leave it to do its thing for a few seconds, you’ll be up and running with Netflix.
It’s not perfect though - the Harmony software to set up activities is pretty rubbish (and by the look of google has been for years so don’t hold your breath). Every activity has to be set up individually; this doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that the Amazon Prime Video setup is identical to the Netflix setup with the exception of a single button press. And there’s no copy/paste for activities. So all twenty or so steps must be entered one by one through one of the slow GUI apps available (I’ve tried iPad and Mac versions, they’re both pretty poor). It’s the sort of trivial thing that turns a fantastic product into one that’s merely good.
Also, there were some instances where only one set of lights were switched on or off but asking Alexa to do the same thing again made it work. I’m guessing shoddy coding in the TP-Link Alexa skill is to blame (because the pi-powered S20 didn’t suffer the same problems).
HA-Bridge emulates a Philips Hue hub which means you can control stuff through anything that can talk to such a hub. Like the Harmony remote. Unfortunately the version I was using (5.0.0) had a bug which meant it wouldn’t link up. Downgrading to 4.5.6 fixed that! So I can now control the S20 via the Harmony remote. Now if I can just find a way of controlling the HS100/110 (google implies it’s possible) I’ll be able to control the Christmas lights via the Harmony as well as Alexa. Pointless? Yes. Fun? Sort of…
And, finally…
A relative asked can I ring up your house when you’re out and shout at Alexa to do stuff? … which made me wonder. So I tried it the other night. Put it this way, I’ve moved the answering machine out of Alexa’s earshot 