• GreenShimada@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    My spouse insists on having one of these. I unplug it when it’s just me at home.

    I call her “our friend in the other room.”

    • rainwall@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      Add a smart plug that alexa controls and plug it in to it. Tell it to unplug itself. You would have to hit the button to turn it back on though.

      You can do it a better way though. Home assistant is a local, open source stand alone home automation suite that can use alexa as an interface. You could have it set a timer to disable alexa with the power plug, and re-enable it when when your wife gets back.

      You could even set it up to turn off alexa whenener you wifes phone leaves the house, and come back on when she comes back if you want a “real time” schedule.

      • GreenShimada@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        Thanks for thinking through all this, I appreciate the time.

        For me, it’s a privacy issue, which is why it lives in a room we rarely hang out in. It’s our only IoT device, which the spouse uses for Spotify and we both use for timers and reminders. We’ve had it for years, so it’s just sort of settled into a low tier of constant usefulness. Though I’ll check the open source Home Assistant to see what options might also be out there. But I wouldn’t want to add layers like constant location tracking relayed to Amazon after doing a lot to cut them off from that data.

        I do like the timer on the socket idea. Might do that.