Alexa has become the hub of every smart home. If you have a good collection of smart home devices, Amazon's assistant will be in charge of turning them on and off, as well as performing all the actions you request. It's very convenient and easy to recite some of the most useful Alexa commands to receive instant information or execute certain simple tasks with a single command. However, Alexa's potential doesn't stop there. Alexa supports a series of automations that allow you to avoid giving the same repetitive commands every day at the same times. These are called routines , and they can be configured for a multitude of different scenarios. This way, depending on the context, Alexa will do one thing or another without requiring your intervention. Sounds good, right? In this article, we'll explain everything you need to know about Alexa automation and routines.
What are Alexa routines?
The first thing you need to understand is the concept. A routine, as its name suggests, is a task that is repeated continuously, almost automatically, after learning a habit or custom, and is usually performed without any conscious decision. This might sound complex and complicated when applied to artificial intelligence, but that's precisely where you need to do your homework.
In Alexa's routines we will define some automated actions, so that if A occurs, Alexa will execute B. It is something like predicting the future and defining what Alexa should do in case that future occurs. It may seem complex, but the wizard allows you to create the most varied routines in a very simple way. However, in order not to beat around the bush, first we will see with practical examples the types of routines that Alexa supports and what they are for. Thus, you can get a clearer idea of how it works.
What kind of routines can I program?
The only limits to the routines are your imagination. Well, that and the 99 routines we can have programmed in our Amazon account. Knowing that, we just need to create our schedules so the assistant works according to our needs.
For example, if you had a projector at home and had blinds and smart bulbs, you could create a routine that with the phrase "Alexa, prepare the cinema" would do the following:
- Turn on the projector
- Turn on the sound system
- Lower motorized screen
- Pull down the blinds to be perfectly dark
- And turn off the lights when 90 seconds have passed and everything is ready.
In addition to programming routines that require a voice command, you can also program others that wait for a status change from a smart device. For example, with smart bells. If someone were to knock on the door, we could do the following:
- Turn on the corridor light with the smart bulb to receive the person with the light on.
As we already told you in previous articles, we could also set up routines to use smart light bulbs in the children's room.
How can I create my routines for Alexa?
Creating your own routines is very simple. As always, you will have to use the official application to manage everything, and from there plan the different approaches that you propose. These are the steps you should follow when creating a routine:
- Open the Amazon Alexa app and open the side menu.
- Selection Routines.
- Click on the + symbol to create a new routine.
- In the first field we will put the name of the routine so that it is easy for us to identify it.
- In the second line we will have to define what will cause this routine to be activated. The options will be 5: Voice, Schedule, Devices, Alarms and Sound Detection. Each one has a different function:
- Voice: Alexa will execute a series of actions when we indicate a specific action. For example, we can associate the command "Turn on living room lamps" with the assistant turning on the two table lamps that we have in our living room. In this way, we would save having to say two separate commands.
- Schedule: These routines will be activated based on the time. For example, we can program that every day at 10 pm, the volume of our Amazon Echo goes down so as not to disturb our children while they sleep. These types of routines can also be perfected with a dynamic setting, such as sunrise and sunset. This is very useful to automate the raising and lowering of blinds, as well as to make better use of turning our smart lights on and off.
- Devices: The routine will be activated when it receives a state change from a device. These types of routines allow a lot of variety in terms of configuration, and it will depend on the number of home automation devices you have at home.
- alarms: A default alarm will trigger the routine as soon as you disable the alarm.
- sound detection: This function is one of the most recent that Amazon has added to Alexa, and allows you to trigger a series of actions when Alexa detects a series of sounds. Six sounds are available so far: Snoring, Barking Dog, Coughing, Water Sound, Appliance Beep, and Baby Crying. Based on these sounds, we can create a routine. This function is very useful in order to monitor a newborn or to detect that we have left the refrigerator open, to give a few examples. However, this feature is still in beta, and is expected to improve in the future, refining the system and adding new sounds to detect.
- With the “When” configured, it is time to define the action, and that is where the thousands of available variables will come into play, from Alexa responses, interaction with devices, news summary, sending messages, executing IFTTT actions and much more. .
The complexity of the routines will be determined by details such as the number of smart devices you have at home and the number of actions that you are able to link with meaning. On many occasions, many of the daily tasks you do at home could be automated with Alexa, so the trick is to always keep the assistant in mind and think about what it could do automatically at all times.
How to automatically turn lights on at a predetermined time
A practical case that could help you is to program the automatic switching on of certain lights in the house when it gets dark. To do this do the following:
- Add a new routine and place the name that best create. For example, “Turn on Dispatch”
- En "When", we will select Schedule, and inside, we will choose To become night. You can fast-forward the feature a bit and specify that it kick in up to 60 minutes before sunset.
- Select which days of the week you want the routine to apply.
- The next step is to select the action to perform, which will be related to a Device. There we will select the lights that we have configured, and we can now save the routine.
How to use Routines with Fire TV
You can also add Fire TV actions to your Alexa Routines. There's a featured routine that lets you see a bit of how the Fire TV and Alexa work together. However, you will also be able to make your personalized routines by combining these two systems. Fire TV actions include turning it on and off; play, pause and resume the video; and content selection. All of this is in addition to lights, blinds, and any other home automation devices you have around the house.
From now on, the lights you selected will turn on on the days you have chosen just when it gets dark at the precise time you have decided. Remember to turn them off! What if you create a routine so that they automatically turn off at a certain time? Or when you say goodnight!