I am quite stumped as to which voice control I would be best off getting, and wanted to know if any of you could help me with some input?
I would like to be able to tell the hub to turn on/off lights, as well as control activities on a Logitech Harmony. In the end I am also going to get some TRV’s of which I hope I can set the temperature through voice control.
Other info: I am an Android phone user, but both me and my girlfriend uses macbooks, ipads and she has an iPhone. The problem would probably be that we live in Norway, so all functionality isn’t available to us anyways.
But I hope you guys have some input on which one is likely to be the best fit for my use?
Essentially if you want a reasonably good experience then you’re down to Amazon Echo or Google Home, both have their distinct advantages and disadvantages.
My preference is Google Home by quite a long way, Google Home will let you rename devices, you can execute routines and Google Home routines are coming soon.
The nicest thing about Echo is that it replies “OK” to “Switch on living room lights” where Google Home replies “There you go, switching on the living room lights” which can get a little bit tiresome.
Can’t offer much of a comparison, but I’ve been using echo with smartthings for a few years and it generally works very well. It’s by far my frequent use of alexa, I’d say it works perfectly about 9 times out of 10. 1 out of 10 it either doesn’t understand the light name or it just fails for some unknown reason.
Re comparison with Home: you can rename devices on echo and execute routines as well (as long as they don’t involve ‘protected’ security related devices).
Good question! I did it ages ago, and just tried and couldn’t…
But then I had a poke around and remembered I didn’t change the device name per so but did a workaround: I created a group and just put one device in it, then I could rename the group.
So you were right, you can’t change the device name, but with a little fudge with groups you can create the same effect.