Alexa - Skill 'Smart Life'

Alexa can schedule routines triggered by the time of sunrise or sunrise without a light sensor (which may not determine sunset correctly if the sky is cloudy). Use an Alexa Smart Plug or equivalent.

Menu > Routines > Create > When this happens > Schedule > Sunset

afaik, IFTTT charges device manufacturers, but now starting to charge device owners too

Yes, please but it's not widely accepted. I bought some Amazon smart plugs on promotion and they work well. At £25 full price 25 they aren't worth the benefit. Cheaper third party plugs need apps with rather "fragile" and sometimes unworkable web sites which I don't want to get sucked into.

Anyway, I don't much like the way Alexa hosts all those third party skills. I guess they want to encourage innovation but it can be a clumsy mess.

For eample, I end up with apps (unwittingly installed by voice command) for LBC Radio and also a skill for their owner's Global Player. Every time I ask for a background sound, like waterfalls, I end up with a new skill. I remove as many as I can.

Groan. I used an IFTTT routine to play BBC radio on Sonos with an Alexa command. It was never that great and now it's effectively in the bin. Oh well, good riddance.

I ordered 4x of them for <£24.

Radio Man formulated on Thursday :

Thanks, that makes it much more useful.

TCP/IP works without the Internet.

TCP/IP works without the Internet.

Pamela explained on 17/09/2020 :

Thanks, thats what I was looking for :-)

I have that set up on a Smart Plug, to test it.

I see a need for more of these Smart Plugs.

But do you think Amazon, Apple, Google will be interested in non-internet connected IoT devices?

I hope they work as advertised. I would be interested to know how they perform.

Pamela has brought this to us :

Faultlessly so far. I put one in my metal roof + roller door garage, not really expecting it to be able to communicate, but it works fine.

They are rated 13/16amps, but I have only switched small loads with them so far.

Out of interest, are you using a third party app on your smartphone to link them to Alexa?

Pamela explained :

To be honest, I have thrashed around that much trying to get it working, I don't know if I am or am not using a third party app.

I may have the Smart Life skill installed, I definitely have the Smart Life app, but it seems I don't really need the latter - because Alexa does all it does and more.

I thinking to order more of these Smart Plugs, as I am finding them very useful.

Pamela wrote on 17/09/2020 :

The four plugs are identicle to these, but lack the Teckin name on them. The MAC traces to Beijing Winner Microelectronics Co.,Ltd.

The Tuya-based gear is supported by third party firmware:

Tasmota runs a webserver locally on the device, and can be set up to speak MQTT to a local command/control server (I use Home Assistant)

I'm not letting the Smart Life app near my phone, so I reflashed the plugs straight out of the box (Maxcio W-UK007S in my case, but the innards are roughly the same).

Theo