Using Alexa to control different Smart Devices in your home is undeniably cool.
Alexa turn on the outdoor lights.
Alexa - "Okay."
But as you've tried to pair your Alexa compatible devices
with the Alexa app and set them up in a group or set them to a schedule
I'm guessing you've found out that doing these things is much easier said than done.
Which is why you're here now.
In my last video I installed a smart light switch at my Mom's house
to control an exterior light on her front porch.
In that video I got the switch paired with the Alexa app on my phone but did not show
how to set that switch to turn the light on and off automatically which is what my Mom wanted.
I saved that tutorial for this video.
Soooo... Let's get started.
In the last video we paired the switch with the Amazon Alexa app so that they will work together.
And so now what we're going to do; is if I go up here to my switches you can see I
have all the different switches that I have installed at my Mom's house.
I do already have all these lights assigned to a group but this video is to show you how to do
that; so... what we're going to do here is we're going to hit the plus sign here at the top...
and we're going to say Add Group.
And then it's going to give us two choices where we can
create basically a single group or this one allows you to combine multiple groups together.
We're just creating a single group so we'll use this one then we'll hit next here and
now it wants us to select a name. We've got a bunch of common names that we can use so we can
select any one of these that we want. For this I'm going to show how I created the group that
I did so I'm going to put a custom name here and I'm going to call this Exterior Lights.
Ok, and then once we've got the name we'll hit Next...
And now it's going to want us to add devices to that group.
My Mom now has five different light switches that have all been paired with Alexa,
and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to choose which one we're going to add
to our exterior lights group here. So let's just go ahead and we're going to select all of them...
and then we're going to hit next...
So now it's asking us if we want to add any other,
like my Mom's Fire TV sticks and stuff but we're not going to do that so we're going to hit Skip
right here. So then it says "Exterior Lights is ready", we'll say Done. So there we go.
We now have the group created and all of our switches that we want as part of that group.
Creating a group and adding our switches to it was pretty doggone easy. Creating a schedule on
the other hand is a little bit more confusing; at least I thought it was the first time I did it.
So what we're going to do here is we're going to hit More and then we're going to go to Routines.
Now as you can see, I already have some routines created and I'm gonna
to show you how to create some new ones. Of course what we're going to want to do here,
is first up here at the top, we're going to hit the plus sign here...
and then we're going to name our Routine.
When my Mom asked me to help her with these light switches she wanted to set up a schedule
where her exterior lights would come on at sunset and then turn off at sunrise.
So that's what we're going to do here. I'm just going to call this Sunset...
and then we'll hit Next...
Once we've named our routine, now what we need to do is tell it what we want this Routine to do.
So right now I'm going to go here and I'm going to select Schedule...
then we have three different choices. We can choose a specific time that we want it to come on
or they already have Sunrise and Sunset here for us.
My Mom wants the lights to turn off at sunset so we're going to hit Sunset...
And then we can choose a time offset here, minutes before or after sunset,
so we can increase that or decrease it; whatever we want.
Then we can choose the day. So if we want certain days
for it to not follow the schedule then we can select that here and of course I want it to do it
every single day, so we're just going to have it at Sunset Every Day and so then I'll hit Next...
and now what we need to do it says to Add Action. This is where we tell it
which devices we want to perform this schedule.
So we're going to go here; and as you can see there's a lot of different things to
choose from here. I'm going to go down to Smart Home here...
and then I'm going to tap on All Devices.
Now here we have listed all of my Mom's light switches. The switch that I installed for her
in my last video is her Front Door Light here so I'm going to add that one, and then it wants
to know what is it going to do at Sunset. Is it going to Power On? Or Power Off? In this case we
want it to Power On at Sunset so i'm going to leave that in the on position then hit next...
and now all I have to do is hit Save and that routine has been created.
Once you have a Routine created you can go in and you can add additional lights onto that same
routine following the same process. You just come down to Smart Home, and then tap on All Devices,
and then you can add any of your other light switches onto that routine that you want.
So now I've got my Mom's light turning on at Sunset now we need to get it turning off at
Sunrise. So we're going to go up here to the plus sign again, add a new routine and we're just going
to follow the same steps that we did before. This one I'm going to call Sunrise, and then hit next.
And then "When This Happens" we want it to follow a Schedule...
and this is going to go to Sunrise...
and the same thing I just want it to be right at Sunrise, I'm not going to do any kind of before or
after sunrise offset here, and I want it to happen every day of the week, so I'm going to hit Next...
and now all we need to do is add that switch the same way we did before.
Scroll on down to... where are you?
Oh! There it is.
Smart Home...
and then we're going to say All Devices.
And then that was my Mom's Front Door Light,
and this time instead of Powering On we want it to Power Off.
So we'll just toggle that right there, hit Next...
and now it's all ready to go. I can hit Save and that Routine has been created.
Now every night when the sun sets
her light will come on and every morning when the sun rises the light will turn off.