If you found an Amazon Echo Dot under the tree this Christmas or you’ve treated yourself to one with a gift card, I’m delighted to say that you now own one of the most versatile smart speakers on the market.
Whether you have one smart device or twenty, an Amazon Echo Dot makes controlling them almost effortless, thanks to voice commands and its compatibility with the best smart home devices.
I use my Echo Dot every day to control my TV, air purifiers, lights, and more, and the impressive variety of routines and automations in the Alexa app has my home running like clockwork. What’s more, you can even pair it with accessories to smarten up standard gadgets, but I’ll share more on that later.
To make sure you’re getting the most out of your new Echo Dot, I’m gifting you a selection of the best smart home features I use in my home, which I highly recommend you try out for yourself.
Reliable Routines
The Routines feature is quite possibly the thing I love most about my Echo Dot, and I recommend experimenting with some of your own creations to see just how game-changing they can be.
As someone who thrives on structure and routine, and happens to own a lot of smart devices, I couldn’t help but get a little excited about the number of automations available to me.
Custom routines are satisfyingly simple to create. They can be set to run at scheduled times or in response to a specified event, such as your Echo Dot detecting the sound of an appliance beeping or an alarm being dismissed.
The latter is particularly useful for stopping your robot hoover starting its scheduled cleaning spree on your day off and ruining your lie-in.
A custom voice command can be assigned to each of your routines, too, so you can set the automations running without waiting for the trigger or picking up your phone to adjust your smart device settings manually.
If setting up routines from scratch doesn’t sound appealing, you can still enjoy some automation magic by selecting one of the many editable presets available on the Alexa app.
There’s a wide range of options, from the practical – having your Echo Dot recite the weather and guiding you through some morning yoga – to niche and novelty options, including getting an alert when your dog wants a treat and having Alexa look after your houseplants.
Smart Sensors
I must confess, I was oblivious to this particularly clever asset when I first had my Echo Dot 5th Gen: it has built-in motion detection and temperature sensors that can be used for a bunch of useful automations.
There are plenty of ways to make use of these sensors, and they're particularly useful to level up less-informed smart devices that may not have their own auto functions.
The integrated temperature sensor is a real bonus if you have one of the best smart thermostats, fans, or air con, as you can build routines to alter the power status, settings, and modes of compatible devices in response to the ambient temperature.
The motion detection comes in especially handy, too. It can set devices to your favorite modes to welcome you home, and save some energy by turning off the lights or adjusting the heating when you’ve left the room for a specified period of time.
As an avid fan of the best smart lights, I always have several on when I'm home. Therefore, I'm particularly grateful for the motion sensing, as I no longer need to venture into my apps to make sure I've turned off my Govee Table Lamp 2 and Nanoleaf 4D before leaving the house.
Smarten Up Your Devices
This tip is an excellent hack if some of your devices aren't compatible with smart home hubs, as you can make an existing device more intelligent by teaming it up with a smart accessory.
Smart plugs are a great way to upgrade a standard device for less. More than just providing an easier way to power a device on and off, you can create automated routines using the Echo Dot's motion and temperature sensors that trigger your device to turn on when a specified temperature or room occupancy level is detected.
You can use Alexa accessories to raise the IQ of some smart devices, too. Let’s take my SwitchBot Air Purifier Table as an example. While it has many talents, its low cost means it can't detect the same range of contaminants as pricier models.
My solution? Using the regularly discounted Amazon Smart Air Quality Monitor to pick up the slack, with a routine that changes the mode on my purifier when certain levels of contaminants are detected. This is a great way to up-skill lower-cost air purifiers, which rarely detect contaminants like VOCs.
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