A great way of making your smart lights feel useful
is to set up a few different lighting “modes”. We’ve found in our house that there are some standard times when we want to change bunch of lights at the same time. Our lights in the living area are set to come on automatically around sunset. But having all the lights on doesn’t really fit with other settings. We’ve set up a “Dinner mode”, which is more pleasant for dining, and a “Movie mode”, for when we’re relaxing on the couch in the evening.
There are a few ways to do this: one way is to set up a custom routine in Alexa. Do this by finding “Routines” in the “More” menu at the bottom left of the Alexa home screen. Give your routine a name, and specify a command to tell Alexa. Your light controls can be found under “Smart Home” when you add the action. Just go through and choose which lights to switch on and off, brightness levels (and colours if you want to get creative!).
It’s also possible to do this by creating an automation in the Smart Life app. We’ve found this to be more flexible and able to do more intricate things with your bulbs. If you’re interested in finding out more about this method, get in touch with us by email or the contact form, and we’ll put more detailed instructions in another article.