I have openly admitted many times over the past year, the main deciding factors on my decision to come over to ST was the announced Alexa integration combined with the release of V2 hub.
We already had this " argument " about whether or not Alexa ( regardless of whether in Dot, Echo, Tap, TV, Kindle ) is a hub or not this week. Give it a break.
The definitions of hub
Hub :
1 A hub is a common connection point for devices in a network.
2 The effective center of an activity, or network.
3 A central facility from which many services operate.
I don’t care if Alexa is just software on AWS, everybody know exactly what everybody is talking about when they talk about Alexa. It does not matter what piece of hardware you are accessing it from. Yes we all know the only direct connections to Echo, Dot, Tap etc are power, LAN & Bluetooth.
By Definition Echo/Dot is a Hub. It is a common connection point for multiple devices on the network. Through the Echo, I can control my Hue lights, my Ecobee thermostats, Wemo lights, make my phone ring so I can figure out where I left it , even listen to music , change channels on my TV.
There seems to be this big issue with some contributors this week about their official definition of a hub. A hub must have Z-wave , ZigBee radios & hopefully both and connect directly with other devices. Well if that is the definition of a hub, why do we all refer to Harmony hub as a hub ? It has none of those things,. It is just a big IR blaster. All it does is receive RF signals from a remote,or commands over internet and convert them to IR, So if Alexa taking a voice command and sending it out to the proper cloud to control light a or thermostat B does not classify it as a hub, how can an IR blaster that you hide in the cabinet be classified as a " hub" ?