Your Christmas Wishlist of Devices!

I just got confused lol.

All I see from your previous post is…

I retracted my statement to preserve my ST ecosystem

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You can still install the Sonos Notification from ide, and you may be able to even set new messages, although as JD mentioned earlier, some messages are playing if they have been cached at one point in the past, before the service broke. I have had success with both, but is not a long term solution as sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. My family became dependant on some of the reminders and when it doesn’t work, we forget to do things. So untill it’s officially fixed, I decided to not invest time in this. Most likely when the official app comes back, there will be changes so you’d need to start over.

This is what I am doing.
I have multiple messages that work, custom messages. I’ve only had my ST setup for a few weeks.

Has anyone tried what @SergioDJ mentioned in the link that @JDRoberts provided to see if it works with your SONOS or no?

That might be something completely different though!

There are several options, I know @ule did a lot of work, but honestly I didn’t have time to try them.

A lot changed for me this year as we moved houses and during the transition I decided to move from Wink to ST. (Yes my purchase agreement stipulated taking the connected themostat and lock with me). Since getting the ST v2 hub I have invested even more.
I had to swap my myq win the move so the linear garage door opener will be under the tree for me. I also convinced someone to get me a z wave door lever for my garage service door ( I plan to incorporate this into me ‘off to work’ habit). I am also hoping for the harmony home hub and remote. I already have a harmony one but the touchscreen delay is really (unnecessarily so) bothering me, and the HA buttons onboard do not hurt.

I am also looking for Alexa under the tree so I can incorporate spoken commands. I am mostlooking forward to harmony + Alexa integration.

January might be an interesting month at our house as the wife gets on board with all the change that is about to happen. I am so looking forward to next week.

And because I couldn’t help myself I got the Osram LED strip to add to the kitchen cabinets while I am off next week (and the wife is at work).

And now I am reading that some of you have LED strips on the bottom of your beds. I am so close to another Amazon order…

I have a problem. And I blame all of you.

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I highly highly recommend Alexa and never put it on my list above because I already have it hehe! She, wow calling a machine a she haha, can control about all the lights in most of house as well as with the help of the community (mostly @MichaelS with his SmartApp) she is also able to trigger routines such as “Bedtime”. Some of that is just as easy with your phone app but the idea is to eliminate the need on a phone app “around the house” and use your voice as my wife is definitely not going to use her phone to turn on the kitchen haha!

Hardest part with Alexa is adapting to not hitting the light switches to turn the bulbs off. There are the zwave wall outlets but I believe they require a neutral wire which we don’t have everywhere and I know one can be put in but yea! There are also switch guards to put on top of the switches to prevent accidental toggling of the switches but those can be crazy expensive for the magnetic ones that you can take off if need be (instead of using screws)…least what I saw was around $5 each which is ouch!

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I second the vote for Alexa. It’s now the main method of on demand light control at our house. Everybody likes it.

We use childproof switch locks to remind people not to use the switches except in an emergency. I got my switch locks at Home Depot in a pack of 6 for $5. No magnets, they use screws. But you can find them at a variety of price points if you look around. :sunglasses:

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Yea I’m looking for the magnet ones and that’s where they get you unfortunately! :frowning:

It’s already hard enough convincing my wife to use Alexa to control the lights and if I took the approach or using the switch locks held in with screws I think that might make her a tiny bit more upset! These things take time to get used to so figured the magnetic ones would work haha!

There are different styles of the cheaper ones. You can’t tell from the photo, but the ones I got are open on the side so they can still be used without having to take them down. They just serve as a reminder.

Ahh I will definitely take a look then, that might work! Thanks!

Just superglue the switches in place. Problem solved!

Hahaha I think at that point if I did that, she would take all the HA and throw it in the garage. Slow steps, slow steps! :smile:

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why not just unhook the switches entirely then… just tie the hot and load together.

Because I want everything to still work even if the home automation is down. Once you hotwire the bulbs you run the danger of not being able to turn them on or off if the failure is in the home automation system.

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Wish the wife would be more on board with the HA. Wouldn’t be so bad if she understood technology. lol

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Yea I went to Home Depot and had the same conversation with the guy there about just tieing the hot/load together and then putting a face plate over and essentially getting rid of the switch toggling per say but ,like @JDRoberts mentioned, I would have a slight issue if ST ever broke (which has happened) or the lights disconnected from ST (which also have happened) and then the light would be on all the time forcing me to definitely take action whereas, worst case, with switch guards I would just be resetting the light and adding it to ST again haha!

As an update, after searching multiple stores leading to not great results (since most of my switches are rockers) I decided to go back to Amazon and get the following ones in bulk…


They solve 3 of the issues I need to fix…

  1. The prevent accidental toggling of the lights by family or even friends or anyone visiting the house that isn’t familar or not used to my HA lights (which has happened so many times accidentally it’s not funny haha).
  2. Even with screws attached, they still allow a small section to manually turn on the light should you need to.
  3. They still look aesthetically pleasing per say (not the best) but wayyyyy better than some of the other ones I’ve seen.

In bulk, they average out to a little over $2 each which isn’t baddddd but when I went in Home Depot all they had were the standard switch guards (no rocker) for $2 for 2 so $1 a piece so ehhh, pay a tiny bit more so both rocker and standard switch guards look the same and look better haha!

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I think the hardest part is definitely getting used to the change which can require a great deal of effort haha. Everybody’s home is different but I’m trying to switch control of most of the home lights and such over to Alexa with ST. I first started with the living room where we watch TV and slowly added more rooms in so as to not piss off my wife by saying…“Guess whattttt Alexa for everything, no more switches” haha.

Before Alexa, I had the UBI and while it integrated with ST it was mostly a failure in terms of voice recognition (and rarely understood what you were saying) which set me back very far in terms of HA with my wife. I mean the stupid crappy hub would default to saying “You are not my friend” whenever it didn’t understand what you were saying. That is not a joke, I wish I recorded that one day so you can believe me haha. Whoever thought of that crap should have been fired as that’s not a funny joke. Ultimately it ended up where she was having a bad day and tried turning the living room lights on and it said “You are not my friend” again so she went right over, unplugged it, and said “I’m done with this crap, no more” haha!

Luckily Alexa has been somewhat flawless so far and I think she likes Alexa waaaayy better but the trust factor is taking time haha!

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@fstbusa What version of smartthings app do u have? It looks completely different to mine and also has more option, like icons to trigger actions and also much more sonos options than i have