smart home

Fun: Having five Amazon devices all reporting problems to you at the same time

If you think the twist is that this isn’t actually fun, you’re half right. But also half wrong!

Today, my internet connection went down, as it does on a roughly weekly or bi-weekly basis. This has been going on for some time, and I’ve contacted my ISP’s tech support for help to no avail. I will not name and shame the company for now, but they are bad and should feel bad.

Anyway, usually power-cycling the router fixes the connection in a few minutes and I move on. Today, only the wired connection seemed to revive. I know this because my phone was complaining about no Wi-Fi and I noticed those ominous yellow lines on the pair of Echo Show 5s in the bedroom that mean. “Hey, where did the internet go?” I foolishly decided to test by asking the living room Echo what time it was. Normally, the closest device will answer, and the others stay quiet. Occasionally it gets confused and the next closest answers instead, but it’s pretty reliable.

If you have an internet connection.

If you don’t, the device you speak to and all other devices will all report connection issues, but each one will be just slightly off from each other, so you get this weird echo (lolz) effect with all of them jabbering at you. It’s funny how quickly it goes from sort of cute to driving you mad.

A second reboot of the router fixed the issue.

But if I could, I’d use the HomePod’s saucy Australian male voice on every device, because hearing that echo through every room would be amazing.

When smart home lighting enters your dreams

Last night I had a brief dream in which I was in bed and awake. It felt late at night or early morning and was still dark. As is often the case in dreams, the room geometry was on the creative side, as I cannot see the kitchen/den area through the bedroom door but in the dream I could.

While looking toward the kitchen area I thought I saw movement and although I can picture what I saw in the dream, I have a hard time describing it. I think it was supposed to be some sort of play on light and shadow that suggested someone moving into the kitchen (away from the bedroom). Next the smart lights in the den winked on, seemingly unprompted. It wasn’t scary, exactly, more unnerving. And I’m pretty sure I had this dream because we do, in fact, have most of the smart lights set to turn on/off at various times of the day and night, so my weary brain decided that maybe they also just do this on their own because they are “smart.”.

And come to think of it, this morning Fleetwood Mac’s “Second Hand News” started blasting from the Echo Shows in the bedroom, prompted by…nothing? I checked the Alex history and could find nothing to suggest why the music would have suddenly started playing when it did. But it’s all part of the charm of a smart home, I guess. At least the timers usually work.