Have you ever felt like you needed to go to red alert?
Perhaps there was an important meeting coming up or you got some good news. Well, Dan Moren over at Six Colors has worked out how you can use a Google Home (or Amazon Echo) with some other home automation tools to activate and deactivate red alert.
Check it out in action:
[Video via YouTube]
In his post, Dan goes into specific details on how he set the system up, but here is a simplified version.
The gear Dan used includes:
- A Google Home (or Amazon Echo or Echo Dot)
- A logitech Harmony Hub
- Hue Lights (make sure they’re color ones!)
- A Sonos player
Setting Up Your Red Alert Warning
Using the Harmony Hub remote from Logitech, he set up a sequence that includes the red alert noise coming from his Sonos speakers and the lights changing to red. This was triggered by an IFTTT applet which uses “red alert” as it’s custom activation word (the echo can do the same, but has some limits).
Then he set up another similar system again using the Harmony Hub this time to change the Hue lights and then turn off the Sonos.
Now, obviously there isn’t that much of a point to having a red alert system other than paying tribute to Star Trek and impressing your friends when they come over. However, you could set up a morning settings where your lights adjust to wake you up and your music system plays your favorite wake up sound track. Alternatively, you could activate a movie mode where the lights dim and the TV turns on or a productivity mode where an instrumental sound track plays to help you focus. Finally, what about a pre-bed setting which has dimmer, more muted lights with some relaxing music to help you get ready for sleep?
Now I just need to grab an Amazon Echo (no Google Home in the UK yet), Logitech Harmony Hub, Hue lights and Sonos…that shouldn’t be too expensive right…oh. ?
Have you set up any voice activated home automation?
[via Six Colors]
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