18 POPULAR SCIENCE
3 The mood setter
In party mode, the LIFX bulbs cycle
through 16 million colours in a pat-
tern that makes your living room
look like a Dat Punk concert. An
end-of-night action called “party’s
over” can reset the lights to max
brightness and whiteness.4 The DJ
Spread out as many as 32 Sonos
One Wi-Fi speakers, and they’ll
create a mesh network that kicks
out jams in every room. The smart-
phone-controlled gadgets are also
Alexa-friendly, so you can shout to
skip a track mid lip-cup battle.1 The host
Amazon’s Alexa-enabled Echo Dot
hears your rallying cry and sends
the signal to the rest of its party
people—er, gadgets. Using IFTTT,
your initial voice command can also
tweet out the invite to friends and
order pizza to keep ‘em fed.5 The entertainment
Smart fog machines aren’t a thing
(yet!), but the D-Link Wi-Fi Plug
can ill in. Hooked into a power-
point, the socket controls the low
of electricity to whatever it powers.
Turn on a bubble machine—or a fan
for when it’s “getting hot in here.”2 The party planner
Alexa relays the shindig-starting
message to the Logitech Harmony
Hub, which connects to all your
devices—from appliances to home
theatres—via Wi-Fi. The console is
what gets your lights in sync with
your speakers, and so on.SMART HOMES CAN MAKE
coffee, but do they know how to
party? Yes, and no. You can set up
a system like this one, which
starts a barnburner at the cry
“Alexa, let’s party,” but making
the connections among bulbs,
speakers, and virtual assistants
takes some doing. Banding your
gadgets together into a raucous
gang of party animals requires
using the app If This Then That
(IFTTT) as glue. Once that’s done,
you’re ready to rage on.PHOTOGRAPH BY TRAVIS RATHBONE PROP STYLING BY WENDY SCHELAH FOR HALLEY RESOURCES23154State
of the
Art by STAN HORACZEKGet the
Party Started