The Best Christmas Gift for the Techie: Amazon’s Alexa

Enjoy Voice Control Technology with Alexa
In search of the best Christmas Gift for the Techie? The holidays can be quite hectic, especially if you’re hosting a lot of family and friends at your house. Aside from the festive parties, you have a lot of shopping to do. So what is the best gift for the techie? If your family member or friend loves smart home automation, Amazon’s Alexa is the perfect choice. Not only would it be great for your modern family, but you can also benefit from the technology yourself right now. In this blog, we’ll explain the newest trend – voice control – and how you can add it to your home in the Lafayette, LA area.

What is Alexa?
Developed by Amazon, Alexa is the smart home automation software that allows you to perform all kinds of tasks through voice commands. It runs on the Echo, Dot, and Tap – smart speakers that connect to your smart home and listen to your voice commands to start or stop tasks. Previously seen as a standalone product for DIY-type home automation products, now Alexa can be integrated into your Control4 smart home. You can simply ask Alexa to turn the heat on or give you the weather report, and it will perform your request instantly. It even gives you a confirmation response of “OK” to re-affirm it heard your command.

Hands-free Automation
If you’re planning on getting a lot of shopping done on Black Friday, you may come home with your hands full. Imagine walking into your house and saying, “Alexa, turn on the lights,” and instantly your living room is illuminated. Voice control technology can be used in a variety of situations like this when you want to quickly change your environment. Not only can you ask the device to perform standalone tasks, but you can also activate saved scenes as well, like “Good Morning,” “Welcome Home,” or “Dinner.” All you have to do is say, “Alexa, turn on Welcome” and right when you step through the front door, your house lights will turn on, the shades will rise, your favorite album will start to play, and the HVAC system will turn on the air conditioning or heat.

Here are a few other examples of what Alexa can do:
• You need to start preparing the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. You say, “Alexa, turn on ‘cooking’ and the kitchen dimmers make the room brighter, the TV turns on the Food Network, and the in-ceiling speakers turn up the volume so you can follow The Pioneer Woman’s recipe.
• After a long day of wrapping gifts, from the comfort of your own bed, say, “Alexa, turn off the house” and the lights will turn off, the shades will close, the doors will lock, and the security system will arm.
To control individual devices say commands like this:
• Alexa, turn on the dining room chandelier
• Alexa, dim the bedside lamp to 40%
• Alexa, adjust the temperature to 75 degrees

These are just a few examples of the ways you can use Alexa in your smart home. Whether you decide to add voice control now to help you out around the holidays, or wrap it as a gift for someone else at Christmas, Alexa is the perfect addition to any connected home.

To add Alexa to your house, fill out this online form.