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Amazon’s New Smart Plug Offers Easy Home Automation With a Hint of Monopoly
Cheap, fast, and in Alexa’s control
If you’ve always dreamed of turning on your lights by screaming at the wall, Amazon has a product for you. The Amazon Smart Plug ($24.99) is a compact dongle that plugs into an existing electrical outlet in your home or office. Any light, appliance, or other device that you plug into the dongle can then be controlled using Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant (and only Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant — more on that below).
Want to retrofit an existing desk lamp so you can control it with your voice? Hook the lamp into an Amazon Smart Plug, plug it into the wall, and follow the setup instructions in the Alexa app on your phone. Within about a minute, you’ll be able to control the lamp by name, using the Alexa app on your phone, your Amazon Echo, or any other Alexa-enabled device.
Personally, I use smart plugs for the lights in my home office. This allows me to perform various magic, like switching them on and off by speaking to my Fitbit Sense smartwatch.
At a hardware level, the Amazon Smart Plug likely uses a beefy 120-volt relay, connected to a Wifi chip. When it receives a signal from Alexa over your home Wi-Fi network, it toggles power to your appliance on or off. Relays can control a…
