it has occurred to me that i’m overthinking the “how to replace the echo dot in my kitchen”
siri. Siri, on any phone after iphone 11, runs just fine without internet. If i can get my hands on some outdated phone, I can leave it off the internet and set it up as my voice-activated “timer” in the kitchen. If I get one with sufficient storage, i can even load it up with music (although i might need a separate speaker for that, i believe the older iphones don’t have great sound).
Anyway. an old used iphone could run me $50 or even less, which is cheaper than the other devices I had been considering, and i won’t have to build anything. less educational, but i have plenty of things to do at this point.
i have also remembered the amazon smart thermostat that runs my heating and cooling…and remembered that old-school programmable thermostats are a thing. $25. i can get one for $25 and get rid of that. plus it won’t fail if my internet goes out. which the smart ones do.
as far as all my smart lights or plugs, those aren’t listening, so that’s a lower priority. there are also smart lights that run through a bluetooth app instead of a smarthome hub like Homekit or Alexa. i wonder if i could hook those up to the kitchen iphone…probably depends on which one..hmmm….
