Smart Home Lighting and Amazon Alexa Control
25 July 2021
As we’re near the end of our floor plan and exterior elevation work on our new home, Debbie and I have turned to more specific elements around electrical and plumbing. Lighting is a critical element of home design, so we have kept this in mind through our design efforts. And as we’re an Amazon Alexa integrated home I thought I’d share some of our thoughts on lighting and smart home automation.
Since starting our smart home journey a few years ago, our first foray into smart lighting was smart bulbs. I’ve found smart bulbs to be a bit problematic and will move away from them in our new home in favor of smart switches instead. But we will have some special applications where LED light strips are the only solution and ideal for the use case. You can also control LED strip lights with Alexa using the Alexa app or voice assistant, by creating a schedule for the lights to turn on and off or triggered by events around your home.
We will have some great opportunities to leverage LED light strips in spaces like ceiling insets, behind crown molding and TVs and some clever up-lighting. The image to the right will give you an idea what options exist around inset ceiling coffer lighting utilizing LED strip lighting. Our primary idea around up-lighting will be in the great room. Our plan there is to install box beams and lay the LED light strips the length (wall to wall) with up-lighting reflecting off the vaulted ceiling. We’ll also have recessed lighting for more direct light. Other up-lighting in our home will be above kitchen cabinets and on the exterior of the house. The LED strip lighting will have color options as well so we’ll be able to leverage that for holiday features and alerts. All of the lighting will be controlled with smart switches and we’ll work with our electrician for placement of outlets to power the lighting and the switches.
Here are some examples of how we plan to integrate LED strip lights into our lighting plan …
Inset above Kitchen island to compliment cabinet lighting.
Inset in Master Bedroom ceiling for soft lighting.
LED strip lighting behind TVs as accent lighting, a visual alert when people are at the front door, sever weather, etc. and coordination with music from the TV and home audio.
There are two types of LED strip lights that work with Alexa. The first type is smart LED strip lights that support Alexa. The lights will either say “Compatible with Alexa,” “Supports Alexa,” “Works with Alexa,” or something similar. You can usually find this information on the product packaging or in the product description when ordering online.
The second type is regular LED strip lights that don’t support Alexa. However, this doesn’t mean that they won’t work with Alexa. You’ll just need to connect them to a smart plug that supports Alexa.
To keep it simple, smart LED strip lights have been designed to work with Alexa to provide users with more features and a better user experience. Regular strip lights plug into outlets and are usually controlled with a remote — these usually limit your features to what’s available on the remote. Thankfully, with the help of smart plugs, we can make regular strip lights work with Alexa, too (but with fewer features).
If you have regular lights, you need a smart plug that supports Alexa. Follow the instructions provided with your smart plug to set it up. Then, connect the smart plug to Alexa through the Alexa app. Once it’s connected, plug your strip lights into the smart plug. Technically, your lights aren’t connected to Alexa, your smart plug is. You’ll be controlling the smart plug, which controls your lights.
For smart LED strip lights, simply plug them into an outlet. Follow the instructions provided with the lights to set them up. Then, pair your smart lights by registering them as a new device in the Alexa app. Follow the instructions in the app to connect the lights.
There are three ways to control your regular strip lights with Alexa.
The first method is through the Alexa app. If you connected your lights to Alexa using a smart plug, you can control the plug through the app. First, open the Alexa app and tap the “Devices” tab at the bottom of the screen. Then, tap “Plugs” in the top row of devices.
Find the name of your smart plug and press the “On” or “Off” switch beside it. Your lights will turn on if the switch says “On,” and they will turn off if the switch says “Off.”
The second method to control your lights is with your voice. You need to be close enough to your Alexa device that it can pick up your voice. Say, “Alexa, turn on [plug name],” or “Alexa, turn off [plug name].”
The last method to control your lights is by scheduling your smart plug. You can create a schedule for your smart plug to turn on and off — through the smart plug’s app or the Alexa app.
There are three ways to control your smart strip lights with Alexa.
The first method is through the Alexa app. If you connected your lights to Alexa, you can control them through the app. First, open the Alexa app and tap the “Devices” tab at the bottom of the screen. Then, tap “Lights” in the top row of devices.
Find the name of your smart lights and press the “On” or “Off” switch beside it. Your lights will turn on if the switch says “On,” and vice versa.
If you tap the name of the lights, you could find additional features, such as the ability to control the brightness and change colors. Some smart lights might have more features than others.
The second method to control your smart lights is with your voice. You just need to be close enough to your Alexa device that it can pick up your voice. Some common commands include:
- “Alexa, turn on [light name].”
- “Alexa, turn off [light name].”
- “Alexa, set [light name] brightness to [0–100] percent.”
- “Alexa, change [light name] color to [color].”
Some smart lights will have more voice commands, but it depends on the brand. And this also brings up another point on smart home integration around naming conventions for specific devices — but that will be another post.
The last method to control your lights is by scheduling them. You can create a schedule for your smart strip lights to turn on and off — through the smart lights’ app or the Alexa app. If you have other smart home tech installed, like motion and door sensors, you can set up triggers that will blink your lights or turn them to a specific color to alert you of activities like a visitor at your front door or a door was left open.
As you can see there are a variety of ways to integrate Alexa into lighting control but using LED light strips offers even more flexibility. And there are endless creative options from a lighting application perspective in home design and construction.
Debbie and I are waiting on the the latest (and hopefully final) version of our floor plan and exterior elevation by the end of this coming week (7/30). If final, our architect has shared that it’s another two weeks to prepare finished plans as there are multiple pages containing different aspects of the home design.
So best case we’re looking at is mid August before we can start working with contractors on bids to build the house. Wood prices have stayed down per the trend over the past couple months but demand has probably risen as well as others holding off on building are moving forward. There’s no telling how long the bid process and evaluation stage will take but we’re hoping not too long as we can still get started before the end of the year (depending on trades availability). I’m really looking forward to documenting the construction process from a smart home perspective as there’s lots to cover.
Debbie and I would love to get your feedback on our lighting plans so let us know in the comments, DMs and email. Do you have other good ideas on smart lighting? What would you change about our plans for your smart home? What are currently doing with smart lighting? Until next week …
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