Here I’m describing the components I’ve used and their interconnections in order to achieve:
Note: I linked on the products I bought for convenience, in no way am I endorsing them.
As shown in the house connectivity diagram, the router is connected to a powerline adapter and another powerline adapter is in proximity to the gaming pc, connected to it over ethernet. Be ware that in order for the powerlines adapter to work, you need to have them in the same circuit in your home.
My raspberry pi connects over wifi but a third optional power adapter can give it an additional connectivity option for redundancy. Both the RPI and the powerline adapter are connected to one extension cable which is powered on by the smart plug.
My gaming PC is connected to the other extension cable which also powers on the second powerline adapter, the PC power supply and the monitor.
The Amazon echo is connected over the wifi and powered by the main home plugs.
The raspberry pi and the gaming pc are also connected to “the cloud”, to an amazon service called SQS. This is a simple messaging queue. Each machine is connected to a different SQS. That way, they can receive commands as SQS messages and process them accordingly (more details on future section).
Your smart plugs should support Alexa and it’s straight forward to manage them. You can also create custom routines on the Alexa app to manage the electrical power on/off.
This custom Alexa skill will help us support 4 main intents to do computer power management over the internet.
The intents I have implemented are:
To learn more go here: