I have had a \u201csmart\u201d home for probably over thirty years. So I get \namused by the \u201cnew\u201d trends in home automation such as Philips Hue, and \nWink, etc. The new technology is great, definitely better than what I \nhave been using, but when I look at replacing what I have I find the \ncosts to be prohibitive. Re-doing my house would cost about $1000 and \nin some ways not be as good as what I currently have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
So what do I currently have? Well I have been using a system known as X10<\/a>. \n It works by sending signals over the existing house wiring. The \nbiggest issue with it is that house wiring is bad for sending signals, \ntoo much interference and noise. But in my case, it works pretty well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I recently got a free smart home consultation from Amazon. I was \npleasantly surprised that it was not a hard sell, but instead was a true\n consultation with an Amazon employee who was pretty knowledgeable about\n the current technologies (but not about X10). I described the system I\n had and we tried to duplicate the X10 functionality with newer \ntechnology. Unfortunately it became obvious that the only things the \nnew technology beat the X10 system in was in voice control with Amazon \nAlexa and being able to use LED bulbs. X10 doesn\u2019t work well with LED \nbulbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The wall switches were three times more expensive, the motion \ndetectors were also more expensive and bulky. So I decided that I would\n try to stay with my X10 system for awhile and see if there was a way to\n integrate it with Amazon Alexa and then slowly migrate to a newer \ntechnology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So off to the Internet to see what could be done and I found a \nworkable solution (although a bit of a hack) for adding Alexa voice \ncontrol to the X10. While I won\u2019t go into detail here you can read about\n it at How to Control X10 Devices With Amazon Echo or Google Home.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n