– Hey Google. It's happy hour. (upbeat tropical music) (ice shaking) (laughter) I'm Jamie, and I'm a
video producer at Asurion. Over the last year, I've gotten married and bought my first house. Now, it's time to make
that home sweet home smart. I'll do it with a little
help from my friends and our Asurion experts. This is Home Smart Home. (upbeat music) Hey, welcome back. My home is really starting to
feel like a smart home now. My favorite thing about
having all of these devices is having them all work together. One of the best ways to do
this is through routines. A routine uses a trigger to start a series of tasks across your smart devices. Some come built into your
Alexa and Google Home app, and you can customize
those or create your own.
For example, I customized
the bedtime routine, so I'll say, "Okay Google, good
night," and it'll set an alarm, lock the doors, turn off the
lights, and play white noise. A routine I made from scratch that I love is my cooking routine. Let's head over to the kitchen, and I'll show you how it's done. All right, step one for creating a routine in the Google Home app is to
make sure you're connected to the same Wi-Fi or
linked to the same account as your speaker.
Step two, have a plan. There are so many things
you could do with routines. If you don't have an idea
of where you're going, it's easy to get lost. So for let's cook, I want it to bring up my
cookbook on the screen here, turn on the light strip
under the cabinets, play some oldies music so I
can jam while I'm cooking, and text my husband to tell him dinner will be ready in 30 minutes. In the Google Home app, go to routines. At the bottom, there's a plus button. Press that, and you can
create your new routine. Add commands and create
your trigger word or phrase. This'll be "let's cook." Assistant will… this is where you'll add the action. Bring up my cookbook. Add. I also want it to turn on the lights. There's an option on
the right that allows me to pick from popular actions.
So I'm going to choose from that. And there I can customize
exactly which light I want to turn on. So I'm going to go ahead and have the kitchen light turn on. Add that. We'll add some music. If you hit the gear here, you can specify what music
or song you want to play. I like oldies when I
cook, so I'll add that, and now we'll want to text my husband to let him know dinner's ready.
Send a text, specify to whom
and what the text will say. Dinner is ready in 30 minutes. And once everything's
there, hit add, and save, and your routine's ready to go. Once it's added, you'll see it in your
list of other routines. I'm using smart lights in my routines, like this Phillips Hue Smart Strip. If you need more info on smart lights and how to set them up,
we have a handy guide on our blog. Check for the link in
the video description. Let's see if it works. Hey Google. Let's cook. – [Google Home] Sure. Your cookbook. (oldies music playing) – Not hard at all, right? There's so many things
you can do with routines depending on what devices you have. I'm going to call my friend Mark, who has some pretty fun
routines set up with his Alexa. Hey Google. Call Mark. – [Google Home] Making
a call to Mark on Duo.
– Hey, what's up? – Hey Mark. We're talking about smart home routines. I want to know which ones you
have set up on your Alexa. – Yeah, I actually use a few of them. One of my favorite ones
is my nighttime routine. So when I tell Alexa good night, it turns off all the lights in my house, sets my thermostat down to a
nice, comfortable temperature, and plays soothing rain sounds
on the Echo in my bedroom. And then my other routine
that I think is even cooler uses my Echo Flex with a motion sensor, my TP Link smart switches, my Echos, and even a couple of smart bulbs. So how it works is when
I walk through the door, I pass in front of that motion sensor, and then it triggers my lights to turn on. It sets my thermostat down to 72 degrees and even plays a special
little message for me. – [Alexa] Welcome back to the pad, Daddio. – So that's what I got
so far with my routines, and I'm looking forward to
add more stuff in the future.
– Awesome. Thanks Mark. I also tapped into our extensive
network of Asurion experts to hear their favorite routines. Here's what they had to say. – [Daniel] I walk into my movie room, the sensor turns on my lights, and then when I turn on my TV, that triggers the lights to dim, and now we're ready to watch a movie. – [Braedon] Computer,
make the bird be quiet. – [Alexa] O'Rourke is in timeout. – [Ted] Computer, it's game time. – So as you can see, the
sky's the limit with routines.
And after hearing some of these, it makes me want to go
get some more smart lights or smart plugs, maybe even a thermostat to get more out of my routines. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to continue to follow along, be sure to hit that subscribe button. And if you missed any of
our previous episodes, be sure to see the other
videos in our channel..
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