What's the crack with Alexa light switches

Hi all

Customer has made a mess of his lighting with trying to install Alexa wifi switches. The usual he said kitchen now turning on bathroom . Not installed any of these before and although will be hourly rate job standing there twiddling my thumbs not a great look so little heads up on these appreciated.

Hope all well

If you don't have experience of these, I don't think you should be charging your normal rate to fix them .............

I would take a pragmatic approach and think of it as the customer allowing you to have on the job training whilst paying you a nominal sum

It's all down to programming what light switch is called what.

If you can't re program them, swap them around physically so the one that operates when you say "kitchen" is moved to the kitchen,.

Well that's how I would do it.

You need to be good at setting up the Alexa app on an I phone.  It's not really (in my opinion)  an electrical installation job, unless he's mucked up the house wiring.

My own system is acting up because I had to restart the router and re-register some switches.

They all work now but I don't understand how to reset the groups and have to address them individually.  I'm waiting until my son is visiting again; he can do it in a flash!   

With I phones you either get it or you don't.  I don't!

Murdoch said:

If you don't have experience of these, I don't think you should be charging your normal rate to fix them .............

I would take a pragmatic approach and think of it as the customer allowing you to have on the job training whilst paying you a nominal sum

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Noted Murdoch. it's generally the approach I take with dealing with things I have lack of experience in.

ProDave said:

It's all down to programming what light switch is called what.

If you can't re program them, swap them around physically so the one that operates when you say "kitchen" is moved to the kitchen,.

Well that's how I would do it.

Click to expand...

Cheers Dave I'll keep that in mind.

Geoff1946 said:

You need to be good at setting up the Alexa app on an I phone.  It's not really (in my opinion)  an electrical installation job, unless he's mucked up the house wiring.

My own system is acting up because I had to restart the router and re-register some switches.

They all work now but I don't understand how to reset the groups and have to address them individually.  I'm waiting until my son is visiting again; he can do it in a flash!   

With I phones you either get it or you don't.  I don't!

Click to expand...

Just had a bit of delve in to them Geoff seems like most wifi switches require a neutral at the switch and like we know most not wired like this. I think that's probably how he's messed up his lighting getting neutrals messed up with switch lines. I'll sort this out first and check what switches he has bought there is apparently ones that don't require neutrals at switches but a capacitor is used to link out neutral and switch live within ceiling rose. Like you not the most techno minded but think about time get with times so probably get my own Alexa and program my own lighting give me a bit more know how with it anyway

DaveS79 said:

I'll sort this out first and check what switches he has bought there is apparently ones that don't require neutrals at switches but a capacitor is used to link out neutral and switch live within ceiling rose.

Click to expand...

similar to some of the neutral free electronic time-switches by the sounds of it.

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