Smart home gadgets are excellent tools for creating a creepy scene at your door this Halloween. Here, I’ll show you how I use smart lighting, smart speakers, motion sensors, and video doorbells to “scare” my smart home each October.
Set your smart speakers on spooky
Say, “Alexa, start Spooky Halloween Sounds,” and your Echo smart speaker will play a continuous loop of screaming, frightening wind noises, charming clanks, haunted bells, creaking steps, and a cacophony of other scary sounds. This is a fun and easy way to get some scary sound effects going around your house on the big night.
I set up two Echo Dot smart speakers in a stereo pair and put them in plastic boilers on the front porch. (It hides them and amplifies the sound.) Then I play the Spooky Halloween Sounds skill all night long on October 31st. You get a lot of amazing looks from trick-or-treaters. Here’s how to set up a stereo pair with your Echo speakers so you can be sure the whole neighborhood can hear the screams:
- Open the Alexa app on your smartphone.
- select file Hardware tab. (Here is a list of Echo headphones that are compatible with stereo pairing.)
- Click on the plus button in the upper right corner.
- Choose Combine loudspeakers.
- Choose Stereo / subwoofer pair.
- Select the two speakers you want to combine.
- Faucet next one.
- Choose either channel for your first amplifier. (The app will automatically set the other one.)
For some spooky fun inside At home, Amazon launched a Halloween-themed skill this week that adds a Halloween vibe to your daily interactions with Alexa. Once enabled, when you ask about things like the weather, timers, alarms, and jokes, Alexa will add some scary sounds like witch giggles and owl cries to the responses. To set this up, just say, “Alexa, enable the Halloween theme,” and when you have enough, you can say, “Alexa, turn off the Halloween theme.”
Furnish your home with smart lighting
From flashing lights to blood-red incandescent bulbs, smart lighting can be put to good use to beautify your space for a spooky season. For my setup, I put two Philips Hue color smart bulbs in some table lamps and two Hue Play light strips under my large front window, paired with an outdoor Hue light strip next to my front door to create a spooky scene that catches everyone’s attention.
Using the Hue smartphone app, I put them all in an “area” I call “Spooky”, then activate one of the six Hue dynamic lighting scenes. Now, I can only tell my smart speakers to turn on “Spooky”. Here’s how to set that up:
How to Create a Hue Halloween Scene
- Open the Hue app.
- Click on the three dots in the upper-right corner.
- Choose Add a new room or area.
- Choose region.
- Select a code for your area.
- Give him a name. (I used “Spooky.”)
- Select the lights you want to place in it.
- Now tap on the area to add a scene.
- tap on Hugh Mashhad Gallery.
- Scroll to Halloween and choose from six pre-made scenes: trick-or-treat, amazing, glowing, witch’s hour, phantom or pandemonium.
- Faucet Add to My Views.
You can easily add and activate multiple scenes for your region from the region’s page in the app. Each Hue Halloween scene is dynamic, which means the lights will change color to add to the effect. To activate this, click the Play button that appears in the scene in the app. You can also set the scene to auto play dynamically and customize the colors in the scene settings.
Another fun way to use Hue lights for Halloween is to pair them with a Philips Hue outdoor motion sensor using the Hue app and turn the lights red when anyone approaches the door.
If you don’t have smart lights, you can use standard colored string lights that plug into an external smart socket. I used a Lutron Caséta external smart plug and a GE Cync external smart plug, both of which work with Alexa. Using their apps, I set the sockets to turn the lights on at night and off in the morning. (I also have Echo Dots connected to these devices so I can easily deactivate them so that passersby can’t control my smart home!)
Both smart sockets can be linked to the Hue motion using the Alexa app so that the lights will turn on when someone comes to the door.
Outdoor lights can be pricey, so just on Halloween night – if it’s expected to dry out – I make a couple of indoor light strips ready to add some extra effects to the house. This year, I have a TP-Link Tapo light bar on the outside wall wrapped around a spider web and a skeleton. The Tapo LED strip has an IP44 rating, so it will handle light splashes. But the plug is not weatherproof, so I made sure to plug it into an indoor outlet.
I love Tapo because it has some fun dynamic lighting effects in its app. I’m using Haunted Mansion and Lightning this year, and the effects are customizable. Tapo also syncs to music, so it will blink and flash in time with the scary sounds coming from the Echo Dots. Tapo also works with Alexa, so I can pair it with the motion sensor to turn it on when people arrive.
Make your smart doorbell scare your visitors
In some neighborhoods, October 31st is the busiest day of the year for the doorbell. This is definitely the case for me. My favorite smart doorbell for Halloween is the Google Doorbell (wired or battery) because it’s the only one that plays spooky ringtones when pressed.
Scary sounds with the Google Nest doorbell
Here’s how to set up your Google Nest doorbell to play scary sounds:
- Open the Google Home app.
- Select your doorbell from cameras tab.
- Click on Settings icon.
- Faucet the bell.
- Faucet bell theme.
- Choose Halloween under seasonal themes.
Now, when anyone presses the doorbell, it will be played from a selection of scary sounds. The doorbell automatically reverts to the classic Ding Dong theme on November 1st.
Scary Sounds With Ring Doorbell
Ring’s video doorbells also have Halloween-themed ringtones, but they are played only from Ring’s plug-in chimes, which are sold separately. On Halloween, you can try to plug it in near the doorbell so visitors can hear it, but it’s not the same as making sounds from the doorbell itself. However, it’s a good option if you’re running a Ring doorbell. To set it up, follow these steps:
- Open the Ring app.
- Press the menu button.
- Choose Hardware.
- Choose the ring you want to enable.
- Choose Audio settings.
- Choose Ringtones.
- Choose from the list, which includes a Dracula theme, witch chatter, scary laughter, and boisterous cats.
- Faucet Saving changes.
- Faucet OK.
Quick responses are one way to make your Ring doorbell greet visitors with some scary responses. The feature is available on all Ring doorbells (except the first generation model) and is free to use.
Once enabled, visitors are greeted with a spooky-looking recorded message. Options include:
- “I’ll be there to eat… I mean salute you!” (Voice of Dracula)
- “Tell us what brought you here… or we will cast a spell on you!” (in a charming voice)
- “Honey, it’s not a full moon tonight, is it? I’m afraid I’m having a bit of a…hairy situation here. Please leave a message!” (using a werewolf voice)
- “The spirits that haunt this house have just awakened! Hurry up and leave a message… before it’s too late.” (in the tones of the English butler)
Turn on Quick Replies in the settings page of the doorbell in the Ring app below smart responses.
Scary sounds with Echo smart speakers
Echo smart speakers can also act as Ring doorbell bells, and you can change the sound an Echo makes when anyone presses the doorbell to one of four Halloween-themed sounds: bats, squeaking doors, howls, and organ music.
- Open the Alexa app.
- Faucet Hardware.
- Choose cameras.
- Go to your doorbell.
- Click on the Settings icon.
- under Adsturn on bell press notifications switch.
- Faucet bell sounds and choose from the list.
These are just a sampling of the fun things you can do with your smart home to entertain trick-or-treaters or have some holiday fun in October. And while I used Philips Hue lighting and TP-Link Tapo here, other smart lighting systems can be set up in similar ways (such as Govee, GE Cync, and TP-Link Kasa). Just make sure you have colored LEDs. (You see, there he is A good reason to buy color smart bulbs!). Don’t forget, it can also be adapted for Christmas, Hanukkah, Easter, birthdays, and any time you just feel lively in your home.
And remember, on October 31st, if you just want to kick back and watch all the action at your door, leave a big bowl of candy (or use the motion-activated trick-or-treat bowl, which helps prevent kids from stealing everything at once! ), sit back, and watch your video doorbell live on Fire TV or Google Chromecast.
Photos and videos from Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
Originally published at San Jose News Bulletin
No comments:
Post a Comment