Earlier this year, I wrote about my adventures in building a smart home in an attempt to make my life a little bit easier. The idea is that by allowing devices to be operated from a central control point, it should allow you to automate tasks that were previously only accomplished by physically interacting with the hardware.

In my house, I have a Nest thermostat, 10 iHome plugs, several Phillips Hue lights, and Sonos speakers that are all operated by an Echo (and sometimes my Invoke). For the most part, everything has gone well and connecting 'dumb' devices to the Internet does offer real value...that is, until it breaks.