I’ve gone all in with the Amazon Echo ecosystem at my house and I was quite happy to when Apex integrated with the Echo. I’ve enabled it and I’ve been slowly enabling a few functions. Here are a few of my favorites...
I can ask alexa what the tank temperature, salinity or pH is. Setting up an alias for each input allows you to ask about it individually without having to go through the whole status report.
I love being able to log test results with Alexa. It’s much easier to just speak the result than trying to log into fusion on my phone and manually input the result. Especially when my hands are wet.
I’ve also got a few outputs enabled. I can ask alexa to “turn on photo mode” which switches the spectrum of the tank lights for better pictures. I can also have her turn the skimmer off for maintenance. The only drawback here is that I need remember to say “Set the Skimmer to Auto” instead of “Turn the skimmer On” when I’m ready to turn the skimmer back on. I’m a bit afraid that I might forget to say auto and that could cause the skimmer to keep running when it should have been automatically turned off.
And finally I have my Apex configured to automatically refill my NSW reservoir for my auto water change when it runs low. It also disables the auto water change at this time so it won’t be adding fresh water to the tank. When the reservoir is full the Apex sends me an alert telling me to add salt to the water. Once I add the salt I can now tell Alexa to “start the auto water change” and the apex will turn it back on. I needed to use a feed timer for this so that nothing gets stuck “ON” and the apex will be able to turn it off again the next time the reservoir runs low.
What are you using the Alexa integration for? Any other cool ideas out there?
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