I had no idea they put that in native…
I’ll have to make a scene and try it.
Don’t make a fuss, dear. I’ll have your spam. I love it. I’m having spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam and spam.
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Hey @tpip Amazon’s smart home director Charlie Kindel answered your question today at CEDIA.
“At Amazon, we think we’re on the cusp of the next major disruption in computing. We think that disruption is around voice.”
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Well of course they are going to say that. I bet Apple said something along those lines about Siri. Google has probably said that several times about many technologies as well. Some may have ended up being truer than others…
Anyway, if Amazon comes out and says 'Yea we developed this Alexa technology, and it’s neat and all, and you should buy them - they do neat things…but beyond that, it is what it is, neat and fun"… That would be pretty deflating.
They are cheer leading their own product. Of course. They should. Now let’s let time reconcile that with reality.
I will say that I agree in general that HA could have a somewhat decentralized future in that those who deliver some of the most interesting technologies may do so with simple wifi connectivity -(Today see: Nest, Arlo, MyQ, etc) and they may deliver full or limited APIs to interact with third parties. We see examples of this today, where technologies are delivered just like this and they aren’t using Zwave or Zigbee or any other such systems. Alexa could play a role in that such a future. I don’t necessarily see what they have as a incredibly strong contender for a major integrator at this center of this all, making all the things work together… but who knows.
That being said, we still need a “hub” to pull together those HA devices that run on zigbee/zwave, even if our logic exists elsewhere.
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All true, but this is also from the same article:
Customers who use Alexa for the smart home use it an average of sixteen times a day."
At my house it gets used a lot more than that. At my elder brother’s house, that’s probably about right. At my younger brother’s house, maybe more like six times a day. But we all like it, and we all use it, and when we go to buy new devices we all make sure that they work with Alexa. 
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Agree, I can’t believe how well folks have taken to Alexa, mainly because I dislike all the voice controls I have ever used.
But even if it becomes the defacto voice control method for HA, they still have a lot to prove to demonstrate they will be a strong enough force to become the center of HA. They need an incredible Logic Engine, IMO. They need enough market ownership to be able to bend other providers to their will so that their little HA offerings “Work with Alexa”… they probably need a strong API to pull that off, etc…
And if they don’t get someone with a Zigbee/Zwave/BluetoothLE hub to fall into their eco, they will need one of their own. There are two many HA uses that will require low power devices.
SmartThings was one of the first official integrations. Also wink. Both have Z wave and zigbee.
Look again at the audience that the Amazon guy was talking to. They’re pitching themselves as an add-on to other home automation systems. They had Crestron on stage with them (!). The journalist might’ve been a little bit confused, but Amazon was right on point. 
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I didn’t know that SmartThings was officially integrated with Alexa. I was under the impression that all the integration was from community developed.
In any event, if they are an add on to other HA - such as ST or Creston - that doesn’t put them at the center of a HA future IMO. Perhaps a wildly popular component, but I think you may need to provide really strong logic to become the controlling factor of HA.
They were one of the first. August 2015.
All depends on definitions. It could easily be the controlling factor in an HA purchase– it definitely is at my house now. Well, a device/system has to work with either HomeKit or echo. But echo for preference.
It could also be the primary way that the householders interact with their home automation system other than one time set up of schedules/automations.
But you’re absolutely right that in itself it’s not an HA control unit.
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The best thing happening in HA at the moment is cross communication. It means most solutions are linkable by one hop or two. Meaningyou buy what you need then link it. Where possible make one controller the master to all of you can
Echo and Alexa is just another tie.
My end game is one app for the wife and voice input if I do it will be one solution. And maybe a single tablet solution. If I have 32 hubs running in the background that’s fine. Just one solution per interface.
Everyone is different and at the moment it’s fine. You can. Let’s hope cross communication keeps happening. Helps us.
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I can use ask Alexa to change my osram bulbs color.
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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" ?
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Give what a break? I think you may be misinterpreting something in my posts.
I didn’t read everything you wrote there, you seem invested in the topic. I have little interest.
I was not referring to you, I just started off replying to @JDRoberts reply to you on whether or not Alexa integration could effect people’s choice on HA.
The rest of my rant was to the people arguing about whether or not Echo is a HA hub. It seems that argument has forced its way into every thread in this forum this week by a few people.
At no time did I say that a hub had to have Zigbee or Zwave.
I said, as I have always said, that from an engineering standpoint for home automation a hub establishes the network that allows devices to communicate with each other.
The harmony hub meets that definition. It’s definitely not just an IR blaster. The remote can send a message to the television (IR) or the Roku (wifi) or the Fire TV (Bluetooth) because of message management in the hub.
If you just want to jump into the dictionary and pull out any English language definition of a word, certainly you can. But then it becomes very difficult to talk about what’s actually happening in a home automation network. “Association” for example has a very specific meaning in a Z wave context. It has lots of other meanings in the English language, but it only has one that applies when it comes to Defining communication between 2 zwave devices.
In English, “exclude,” “disassociate,” and “remove membership” are synonyms. But when discussing a Z wave network they have three different meanings. Not recognizing that can lead you into a whole world of problems.
And in wiring, both “common” and “neutral” have a meaning that is very different from everyday English.
I realize it’s frustrating, and and perhaps it would’ve been better if the engineering field had invented entirely new terminology for areas where specific meetings are important. So that a hub was not called a hub, it was called a “zorgoplex” or some other made up term, and then there would definitely be less confusion all around.
But that isn’t what happened historically. English words were taken and applied to specific technology situations and given limited meanings within that context.
The key to understanding the technical definition of “hub” in the home automation context as opposed to just a random English conversation is that it is a hardware device that on an engineering level controls how messages are sent from one device to another.
A smart home hub is a hardware device that connects the devices on a home automation network and controls communications among them.
It’s the post office.
It’s boringly simple from the end-user’s point of view, and maddeningly complex from the engineer’s.
It doesn’t facilitate the writing of the message. It doesn’t care about what’s inside the envelope. It is obsessively finicky about what goes on the outside of the envelope, and how much it costs to send the message.
I’m not asking that you redefine what “hub” means in every day English conversation. Only that you understand that there is a real world physics and engineering component to home automation and that world has its own terminology in which “hub” has a limited specific meaning.
Submitted with respect.
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I guess I should have made a second comment when I started my rant .
I’ll give you the same excuse as I did @JH1. I was agreeing with you about ST / Alexa official integration in Aug 2015 , right along with the pre-orders of V2 hub.
Then I kept reading up/down the thread and saw the same old arguments about Alexa being just software and Echo just a speaker and in no way a hub
The rest of my rant was on the argument some people keep putting into every conversation about their definition of what defines a HA hub. So I gave the official dictionary of a hub and another example ( Harmony) of a " hub" that is nothing more than a IR blaster.
Since Alexa can in fact connect multiple devices even if through the internet, it is the center of many people’s HA. If not for Alexa/Hue all WAF would be gone after the past couple weeks of ST/Hue not turning on lights when it should. Since she can just ask Alexa to turn it on, it has had little effect on WAF.
I can say that my industry in at stemmed directly from the Alexa integration. There were only two reasons that I ventured into the winkverse first.
~ V2 hub was coming out in a month, so I waited
~ wink was already Alexa integrated
My entire system is based around the ability to have voice control for everything. Yes, I have a ton of automations, but at any moment I can override every aspect of the automation with just my voice. Soon, I will have voice control coverage in every part of my home.
My family uses Alexa to send messages to others in the house.
I would say mine is used well in excess of 16 times per day.
Without Alexa, I would not have any home automation.
EDIT< @RLDreams, personally I don’t care what is or is not a hub. Each component of the system is essential to the system, they can call it what ever they want. I don’t care if I have to build a server room to run my system and call Bob…
It’s all about coming home at night and my home welcomes me home.
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I don’t believe you. You had ST before Echo? No?
No, I got Alexa first… then Wink for about 30 days… short enough to return it to HD… Then ST.
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Interesting. I guess people really want to talk to their houses.
So question for you. If Amazon shut down Alexa tomorrow, would you permanently shut down SmartThings?