Page 7 - July 2018

My Smart Home

warding so all incoming calls are transferred to
“Alexa “what’s next” my cell phone.

By Jasmine D’Katz Ok, I need more SMARTNESS!
I’ve been building a Smart Home for the past My morning routine as I enter my kitchen is to
year as some of you may have gathered from open the blinds, but I now have MySmartBlinds
the Video Door bell presentation at the May open/close the blinds at sunrise and sunset or
meeting. The system in a hodgepodge of sys- by the touch of an icon on my iPhone or iPad.
tems, but mostly control by Amazon Alexa. The kitchen was a test and I’ve since ordered
Alexa came into the home over two years ago one for the living room window. But, where is my
and I have since expanded to four devices. The phone? Oh yes, Alexa “open the kitchen blinds,”
office and studio devices are mostly used for that was easy.
music, and the bedroom device is for my Two weeks ago, Amazon announced the Fire
wakeup weather report, plus and interesting fact TV Cube, another Alexa enable device to control
of the day. The Amazon Alexa Show sits in the my entertainment system. Now I can ask Alexa
living room and keeps me up to day on the tem- to turn the TV on/of, change channels on the ca-
perature and flashes the latest on news and en- ble box, operate my Roku, Apple TV, DVD play-
tertainment. er and completely control my AV system.
After doing server months of research, over the
winter, I’ve added a the ecobee 3 WiFi smart
thermostat, five Netgear Arlo security cameras
and upgraded my Ooma to the Ooma Telo
Home Security system and lastly the Ring Video
Camera. All these devices can be accessed
threw my Amazon Alexa.

So, I can now I can control the temperature by What’s Next?
just the sound of my voice, or I can ask Alexa to My Roomba is reaching the end of its life span
show me any one of my five cameras on the and needs to be replace with one of the newer
Echo Show. As I said, I upgraded to the Ooma Alexa enabled devices. Humm…since I’ve only
Telo security which I’ve been using for several had the Fire TV Cube a couple of days, and so
years when I replaced my landline. Now the Oo- far, I like what I’m able to do with it, I see one in
ma also lets me know the status of my doors, my bedroom and office in the future.
windows and water in the basement. Especially
around the water heater and sump pump. Oo-
ma is connected to the Amazon Connect which
allows me to make and receive phone calls. Be-
ing that this is connected to my Alexa Show, in-
coming calls are announced and viewed on the
screen, and at the touch of a button you can an-
swer the call. The Ooma also gives me call for-

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