Wow. All this stuff sounds incredibly entertaining. Completely freaking useless but entertaining as hell.
alot like most hobbies; cool - fun - expensive - but really not needed....
I think soon it will be the norm rather than the exception. 'Smart homes' have been around for a long time - I remember Bob Villa and This Old House did one like in the mid 80's and I did some basics back in the early 90's in my second house but it has always been semi unreliable and very clunky to use. Even with phone apps, still clunky to use - it would be easier to walk to the switch and flip it. Apps are great if you are away and want to change light patterns / furnace temp, etc.
Moving to a voice program, with good voice recognition, is the game changer imo. And I'm just playing with the smart home - the connection to the vast quantity of information on the internet thru a small device on you counter (or i'm waiting on a cool holder that goes in a wall plug) is where it all become a useful thing to have. Plus the "pull my finger' skill i installed last night. Wife was not amused.
Per reports from this years CES, Alexa is now licensed to go into Ford vehicles. GE is already building her into certain appliances. ETC. It is coming to you like it or not and remember this is only about 3 year old technology - think of another 20 years what it will be. I'm stoked...
I've been saying for about 20 years now when I first took a memory stick out of my Sony Mavica (which I still have and it still works) and put into a card reader hooked to my laptop; if you want to know our future watch Star Trek. There was a scene of Spock inserting what we now would call a mini CD into the Enterprise console and pausing, looking at Kirk or someone and stating 'this contains the entire history of Earth and the Human race. At the time I first saw it I thought no way (even tho I grew up with both parents working for IBM). As I slid my memory stick into the slot my mind flashed to that scene I saw as a child and thought - the future is here.
Even the Economist (great magazine if you are not aware of t) has debated whether Star Trek predicts the future or give humans direction to build it. And the reason I went back to Alexa even tho I will never apparently be able to use Phillips Hue is that I can rename it to 'Computer'. Really. I'm that big of a dork.
Here is an interesting read; my dad's blog. As I said, he was a lifer with IBM (so was stepmom) - he started shortly after he came back from Vietnam and retired from them. Depending on how you read about 5-10 minute: Keep in mind as well his post was 7 years ago. (oh and he spends a couple month each year in Paris so that's why there is a bunch of frenchie references)
http://noellivefromparis.blogspot.co...-big-bang.html