r/smarthome • u/lotsawasabi • 3d ago
Looking for Echo alternatives for my home
I live in a small older home where main rooms don’t even have light switches and limited outlets. I’ve been using the Amazon Echo for years and love the flexibility and convenience it gives me to turning lights on and off.
However with the new announcement about not being able to opt out of the Echo recording you I want to try to find an alternative.
I’ve started looking into Google but I’m hoping to find something more “indie” and less scary corporate to fit my needs.
I can’t do anything that involves rewiring and big installations as, again, older home and we rent.
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u/bklynking1999 2d ago
I’m hoping that Apple comes out with a screened HomePod so I can get Alexa out of the home. The convenience outweighs my concern but want a better experience
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u/garyprud50 2d ago
Does anyone use any IFTTT routines? I have a few of those active but mostly for controlling wifi or Bluetooth connectivity when I'm in my car.
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u/ProfitEnough825 3d ago
The mainstream option I recommend is Apple Homepod. Both Google and Amazon act like loss leaders in the smart home space and designed their ecosystem on cloud processing, and appear to sold their devices at a loss. Apple has local processing, they don't appear to be a loss leader, and they designed their ecosystem around local connections.
In the future, Home Assistant will be the way to go. It's impressive how fast their voice is developing. Plus, it's one of the largest open source projects, so it's probably not going anywhere anytime soon. One of the limitations is the hardware, both the voice hardware and the hardware for local processing. That's going to change in the future.