How to setup Amazon Alexa to control your garden lights

If like me, you have spent lots of time making sure your garden looks good why not get more out of it by having it lit up in the evening. You can spend extra time in your garden in the evenings and carefully positioned lights can make your garden look amazing, and give it a very different look from the daytime view.

Installing garden lights is straightforward and of couple of devices you can make them smart lights that you control from Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, smart phone or having turn on automatically at dusk.

Smart Garden Lighting

I installed smart lighting in my garden last year and here is what I used:

• Amazon Dot for voice control
• D-Link DSP-W215/B Smart Plug for controlling the power (this model has been replaced with D-Link DSP-W115 which I reviewed here)
• Techmar 12v lighting cables
• Techmar 12v lights
• Techmar transformer
• Outdoor dual mains socket with cable

I already had a mains power socket in the garage, which I plugged the D-Link smart plug into, I ran a long cable from the smart plug (with a mains plug on it) under the path down the side of the garden to an outdoor double socket which I fitted. Into the outdoor sockets I plugged two Techmar 12v transformer. The transformers is outdoor ready so I put them into outdoor rated boxes just to make it neat and safe.

The Techmar system works by attaching special cables to the transformer and then lights have the same connector on them that plugs into the cable. No soldering required you just screw place the lights where you want them and then connect them all together. You can mix and match the lights and I have a mixture of spots and uplighters. As the lights are low voltage LED you can have lots of lights all powered off a single transformer, I ended up having two transformers due to the way I purchased them but you can have just the one. I ran the cables under the ground during the construction of garden but as they are small low voltage cables, you can easily bury them under the top soil without any issues.

Amazon Alexa control of garden lights

The smart part of the system is the D-Link smart plug which you connect to your Wi-Fi network via a WPS button, and then you can control it via a D-Link app (iOS or Android). With the app you can turn the plug on and off and setup on/off schedules. As the outdoor lights are plugged into smart plug I can now control the lights via the app. D-Link have a skill for Amazon Alexa so you can control the plug via an Amazon Dot or Echo. To control the D-Link plug, you enable the skill on the Alexa app and then ask Alexa to detect devices. In the D-Link app I called my plug “garden” and then through Alexa ask it to turn on or off garden. You can also link the plug to Google Assistant so you can control the lights from a Google Home or an Android phone.

It works really well, anyone in the family can use it, and with the schedule I can have them come on and off whenever I want. D-Link plugs also work with 3^rd party systems like IFTTT and Stringify which means you can control the lights from external triggers. For example I have a trigger setup to turn the lights on at dusk and turn off at midnight, the dusk time is automatically set by the GPS location and changes each day. I have an article on how to setup your Christmas lights turn on automatically at dusk and for the garden lights, the setup is the same so have a look at the post for a step-by-step guide.

So there is a whole range of options you can do with the smart plug and therefor the lights, it has been really simple to install and is really effective. The low voltage lights are easy to wire yourself with only the outdoor 240v wiring that should be done by a qualified electrician (or at least someone that knowns what they are doing).

Some of the costs are:

• D-Link DSP-W215/B Smart Plug £20 / D-Link DSP-W115 £29
• Amazon Dot £44.99
• Techmar lighting starter set £89.99
• Outdoor sockets £34

I bought additional lights and three extra extension cables so you can spend as much as your budget will allow. It was a fun project and impressive when you use voice to light up the whole garden at night. Here is video of the lights in action: