How to turn Amazon Echo into the brains of your smarthome

In the companion app for Wink, you can add any number of different connected devices in just a few seconds.

You can't tell Alexa what lights to turn on if they don't have names. Be descriptive so that your voice commands sound logical for any and all users.

Here I've bundled a pair of connected lights in my Family Room into a single group. Note that Alexa can't read the group information, so you have to re-create them manually in the Echo companion app.

Before Alexa can control any smarthome gadgets, you'll have to link a hub to her. Use the middle section for this process.

By singing in to Wink through the Echo app, you're giving Amazon access to learn about installed devices.

At this point, the Echo knows there's a smarthome hub on the same network. Now to gather up all the devices it can control.

Tap the Discover Devices option and the Echo will find them all in your home using the Wink account access and hub.

Since I've authorized Amazon to access my Wink account, it's retrieving my connected devices. When this steps complete, Alexa will actually say aloud how many devices she found.

All four of my bulbs were discovered by the Echo and Alexa can now switch them on or off based on my spoken word. If you have any grouped devices, you're not quite done yet.

It's a pretty simple process: Just choose a descriptive name for a group and select which devices are a part of it.