It's time for me to finally give Alexa (and other smart assistants) the boot
Why I'm kicking smart assistants from big tech firms out of my smart home — and what I'm planning to replace them with.
It has been around six years since I purchased my first smart assistant device, the Amazon Echo Dot. It was a gimmick and was a purchase I didn't need to make, but we enjoyed being able to use voice controls to manage lighting and other various bits around the home. The Echo Plus was then added to the mix, and things progressed well until we hit a few brick walls. We're now looking at ways to replace Amazon Alexa and Echo with better speakers and more community-friendly software support, mostly powered through Home Assistant.
