Why the hate with light switches?
This all stems from the vision of having the house looking on the bring of a Tron set. I’ve made shelves with the plan of having in built LED lighting. This takes care of ambient lighting in the dining room. I also want to have similar lighting under the bannister leading up the stairs and along the picture rails in the hallway.
When we moved in, I was desparate to remove these bulky picture rails. I’m so glad I never comitted to removing the original artifacts of the house! Instead I plan to put my own contemporary spin utilising these.
The point I’m highlighting here is that I have four zones with LED lighting –
- Alcove shelves
- Bannister on the stairs
- Bannister on landing
- Picture rails in hallway
Now there’s several ways of controlling these. My main concern was I don’t want to spend half my life flicking switches on and off depending on where I am in the house.
Voice interface? Apps? Remote control? Still too much effort
I’ve got a fair few smart devices that aren’t made by Amazon. This isn’t really a problem when they can be controlled by Echo devices to begin with. For example
“Alexa, turn on oil diffuser”
Now there’s an endless choice of readymade LED solutions. Most are pretty rubbish tatt that you can expect to get discoloured or blown LEDs after a few months. It’s definitely worth going for 5050 LEDs that have a separate diode for whites, rather than the reddish white in attempt of a clean white.
The problem with most LED controllers are that they come with some sketchy app which goes to some ridiculous levels in data capture. First pet, mothers maiden name, name of best friend… All in the name of lighting?!
Even though I am near my phone more often than a fixed light switch, I still wasn’t keen on using my phone, or asking alexa every time I move around the house, or one of those LED remotes to control the secondary lighting.
Motion detection with Amazon Echo Flex
Enter the Echo flex! I’ve completely embraced the Amazon ecosystem for home automation. It wasn’t even intentional as I’d have rather dabbled in all of them (bar Siri) before making further investments. It all started with getting an Echo on a good price at the airport. I don’t think at the time I could really justify the purchase to friends as we only used it in the kitchen for using timers whilst cooking. That in itself was a great convenience when your hands have dealt with raw chicken!
So the Echo flex has the full functionality of Alexa but with a tiny speaker, it plugs directly into a 3 pin socket so the form factor isn’t too far off a phone charger. Don’t expect to be blasting tunes from it (although it does have a handy 3.5 aux output).
Where the Echo flex really comes into its own is the USB socket underneath. An official third party, Third Reality has made plug ins which make the flex a far more advanced system. There’s a smart clock addition, a light addition and the PIR sensor.
This PIR sensor connects to the bottom make a flush fit. On the Alexa app this pairing now shows as two devices, an Echo flex and a motion sensor. This basically unlocks a whole load more of opportunities to create motion dependent routines!
Motion detection in practice
So I’ve bought two flexes and two motion sensors. The plan is to have one on either floor. This means whenever any movement is detected within these zones, I can set all the LEDs in the 4 zones to turn on. I should then be able to set them to stay on for a given amount of time to then automatically turn off. This should mean that I never need to deal turning the LEDs on or off.
Time based routines
The benefit to this effort would mean that when we come through the front door, the hallway’s automatically turns on.
Our bathroom is downstairs, if anyone needs the toilet during the night, I should be able to set the LEDs to go on a dimmer setting through the night. Better than being awoken having full blast lighting on your journey to the toilet.
Hypothetically I could also enable a ‘holiday mode’. This means that if we were to be away from the house, I could set a routine so that whenever any unwanted motion is detected, to just turn all the lights and devices in the house on to ward off unwanted guests?
I got these on Prime day sales so it’s definitely premature, I still have a lot to work out regarding the LED controllers themselves!
If after reading all this you think, “Couldn’t you do all this with Philips Hue?”
Yes you can, but expect to pay over the odds for seriously overpriced gear. Even their motion detection sensor is about £40.00 for the one!
