Over the last couple years I’ve been tinkering with voice assistants. In reality, it goes back about 10 years before Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri existed in the market. I developed applications with voice interaction in warehouses with mobile scanners. I guess I just got hooked. So fast forward to today and my home has 4 Alexas, 1 Fire Tablet with Alexa enabled, one Google Assistant and an Ecobee SmartThermostat with Alexa built in to be delivered this week.

I know, Amazon and Google are listening to me and had people over the world analyzing what I say. All I can say is, if they have chosen to analyze what is going on in my house they are very bored folks. Google and Facebook already know way more about my life than what comes out of my mouth.

So why have all the voice assistants? It started with fascination with the technology. It is what we have been waiting for since the dawn of computers, asking them questions and verbally giving them commands to do tasks for us. Asking Google Assistant questions is just like doing Google searches online. It does a great job at getting answers. Asking Alexa the same question is a crap shoot as to whether any real answer comes back at all. So most of the time I ask Alexa questions just to respond and insult ‘her’ lack of intelligence. But to be fair to Alexa, just try searching for any information on Amazon about their own site. If you don’t ask the question exactly right you won’t find an answer.

But asking random questions is not why I have voice assistants. I have them for home automation. I have been told that this is the epitome of laziness. How hard is it to flip the light switch? These are the same folks that use TV remotes rather than doing what I did in the dark ages of turning the dial to change channels, the knob to adjust volume and don’t forget the horizontal hold when the picture started rolling.

It has been my intention to share my journey with home automation since I started. I read and tinker and build but never get around to sharing what I do other than bending someone’s ear when I can. Let’s see if I can catch up the writing and sharing more with you here.

Those that know me understand that I don’t always take the path of least resistance. That is the case with home automation as well. I’m a tinkerer/maker and I like to learn how things work. I will build something when I could have spent a few bucks and just bought one. Before I bought my first Alexa I had loaded Alexa software on a Raspberry Pi computer. I did the same with Google Assistant. Rather than purchase a smart home hub I opted for the Open Source Home Assistant as my tinkering platform.

There are several projects that I built in the past that I will go back and catch you up on as I bring them back online. We moved to a new house recently and I have yet to get all my old automation installed so a great opportunity to discuss as I go. And as we purchase new items like a thermostat and a ceiling fan I’m keeping my eye out for smart home capability. And I always try to do it on the cheap even though it can take me way more time to accomplish it. I like the process and enjoy the accomplishment of piecing it together or writing the code to make it all work.

I promise I’ll try not to get too geeky as we share this journey. Not all that I do is built by me so we’ll be plugging things in and just watching them work. Hopefully you too will see that home automation is easy and fun. And with the technology available today it is possible that you can do it all yourself.