With all this time off for Christmas vacation, I've started putting together my smart house. Wondering if anyone else is doing anything cool with Alexa or Google?

The first thing I did was buy a couple of these, which turned on the Christmas lights every night at 5PM and shut them off at 11PM. You could also control them by voice with Alexa or Google by saing "Turn the Christmas tree on".

Next I made it so the house recognizes when I'm home or away; which allows me to set the temperature of Nest automatically. No more heating a house when no one is home. Nest also detects motion, so if anyone of my family members goes to my house when I'm not there, it will act accordingly. The motion detection is especially useful when you are going away for a few days and want to report someone in your home.

The fun part is creating routines that do multiple things at once; like saying "Alexa or Google, Bedtime" which will turn off the TV, dimm the living room lights, turn on the hallway lights and turn on the bedroom lights.

I decided to go with Smartthings as the main hub, because it's compatible with both Z-Wave and Zigbee. But I also have a hue hub in case I want to get any additional Phillips stuff. Been thinking about picking up a bloom for the computer room.

I just ordered one of these which should allow me to dim the lights in addition to shutting them off and on. I bought very specific white lighting, so dimming them is absolutely necessary. THey are way too bright as is.

What i'm finding difficult is getting four way switches to control the lights of the rooms that have four way switches. They don't seem to make any Z-Wave or zigbee switch like this. They also dont seem to make any half switches which makes other things like, fans, difficult to control.

I also planned accordingly when I built the house to allow all my cat6, speaker wire and coax to go to one closet in the living room. So it's pretty easy to set everything up in one area. Still need better cable management though. Anyone else doing anything cool?