Amazon Digital Assistant can now control some of your smart devices for you – without the need for any requests. But before you start dreaming of a day when Alexa will make your coffee in the morning and the car is already warming up in the garage for your commute, you know that her powers were slightly reduced in this first step.
To get started, set up “Hunches” in your Alexa app (iOS, Android). Pull the app up, tap More in the lower right corner, tap settingsand scroll down a little. Press joy when you see it, it will open a screen that looks like this:
Press “Set up automatic actions” and you’ll get a small list of potential actions that Alexa can do on your behalf. I mainly have smart lights around my house, so I have a choice of the two:
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When you select an action, you’ll get a short video that tells you more about Alexa’s auto-reply. You can also tap “Learn More” to get an idea of the parameters that could cause Alexa to take action on your behalf. For example:
If you’re ready to turn on Alexa’s automatic foreboding, tap Next →. In my case, then I have to choose which lights I want to control Alexa, but that’s it. My “premonition” is then set up and I can go back to joy part of my Alexa app to check when Alexa will trigger one.
To remove a cartridge, just click the wheel icon in the upper right corner of the joy screen. Look for the “Auto Actions” section, tap any smart device you see, and you’ll be able to turn an available auto-action on or off:
Alexa’s automatic actions only work for a subset of smart devices right now, including lights, thermostats, doors and switches.
Once you’re done playing with pockets for them, you should also check out the new Alexa “Energy dashboard” function to see how much smart devices consume during the day.
To access it, simply press Instruments at the bottom of the app, then tap Energy dashboard box to the top. Once you’ve read a little about how it works and touch Browse devices continue. However, that’s how I got here; either the feature hasn’t been released yet, or I need to adjust something with my lights on so that Alexa knows how to add them to a dashboard.
However, it will be a fun feature to play with. While it won’t be as accurate as, for example, the power readings you might get from a smart switch itself, it will provide at least a decent way to see if your devices are consuming more power than you would like. No one enjoys the monthly energy bill fueled by the pandemic.