With the arrival of Amazon Echo and the voice assistant Alexa, the idea of smart home and home automation system began to make room; with the help of Amazon smart speakers you can in fact manage dozens of compatible devices, including lights and smart light bulbs. In this article we will show you how to connect Alexa to lights and light bulbs.
Index
Before starting
As also stated in the Amazon assistance pages, before making Alexa interact with the lights it is necessary to carry out preliminary operations without which it would be impossible to let Amazon’s assistant know about the bulbs.
NB: Make sure that the smart light bulbs you have purchased are compatible with Amazon Alexa, and therefore have the Works with Alexa sticker.
First of all you will need to make the first configuration of the bulbs you purchased using the app or web control panel that was made available by the manufacturer. In this way Alexa will be able to recognize the smart bulbs and manage them with simple voice commands. You also need to make sure you have downloaded all the light bulb firmware updates and connected both the latter and the Echo speakers to the same Wi-Fi network.
Find new devices
To connect Alexa to home lights the easiest and fastest way is to use the Find new devices feature, which you will find inside the app. As you can see from the name, this function allows you to automatically search for new gadgets for the smart home. To do this you need to open the app of Alexa you have on your smartphone, then you have to tap the menu button on the top left. At this point you have to select the option Add devices and then Light bulb, then you will have to select the manufacturer from the list and follow the instructions that will appear on the screen to make the configuration. Alternatively, you can press the Devices button, located at the bottom left, and immediately after the + icon, and then follow the wizard.
Use the skills
In the event that the usual procedure is not successful, you can use the Alexa skills, available in the Amazon store. The latter are nothing more than applications capable of adding new features to the smart speaker.
Among those on the list, for sure you will also find that of the manufacturer of your smart light bulb; to do this, just look for it from the Alexa app and tap on Activate. In this way the latter will be installed in your home automation system. Once this is done, in order to connect the profile you created earlier to configure the light bulb with the manufacturer’s app, with the Amazon account you will have to follow the procedure that will appear on the screen, then you will have to wait a few moments. Once the procedure has been completed, ask Alexa to detect the device using the “Discover my devices” command or by following the procedure described in the previous point.
Alexa commands
Once you have connected the lights and Alexa, you can use your smart light bulbs and control them through voice commands and questions. The simplest requests are “Alexa, turn on the lights in the kitchen” or “Alexa, turn off the lights in the bathroom” and so on. Depending on the model of bulbs you have chosen, you can increase or decrease the brightness, change the hue of white or change the color of the light completely.