Perfectly fine. That's how my Alexa is setup "Alexa turn on the Pinball Parlor".

You'll be saving wear and tear on the mechanical switches on the machines. No harm to the games themselves, but make sure your infrastructure OUTSIDE the game can handle the surge of current from turning on the machines all at once (i.e. your smart switches are are kept well within current limits, branch line breakers etc...)

Yep, I have most of my games run through one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KFZ98YO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_6z.ICbJXQZK21

I leave them "on" at the game switch 24/7 and use the strip to turn them on and off.

+1: Use Alexa to control the arcade. 'Alexa Let's Play' cranks up the machines with a slight pause between each one, all while playing Pinball Wizard!

With the Stern's spike games on/off switch on the backbox and you have a row of pins lined up Alexa is what you need. She starts all mine up individual one at a time. Alexa, Game of thrones on, Alexa, Aerosmith on, Alexa, The Walking Dead on. Ect ect ect... But when I say Alexa, Game Room Off. Lights and games go off. Now if I could get her to get me a beer.

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Dallas_Pin I have the hardware for this (zwave outlets, smart things, echo, etc), but I'm an Alexa novice. Can you give a rough idea how you accomplished this?

I’m curious about the slight pause, I’d like to do that.

Probably using routines to accomplish this. It’s a flow chart that starts with “when you say Alexa”, what happens? Then what happens after that? Etc. My routine starts all 13 machines, controlled by 4 smart plugs lumped together in one group. I’m pretty sure instead of me having Alexa turn on the group I instead have it turn on smart plug 1, then 2, etc, and end it with dimming the lights and starting the pinball music playlist.

Alexa by default does not accept pauses, so you have to create your own pause by adding an activity. For a pause, have Alexa set volume to 0 and tell Alexa to say something. When Alexa is speaking, you can’t hear it, but it adds a pause for as long as it takes to speak. It’s a work around, but it works. I want my pins to come up in order and not all 12 at once, so this helps.

I also use Alexa for virtually every element of our house including the game room. To take full advantage of Alexa and the features including timed power and sequential power its best to use one of the hooks called IFTTT. Basically they are prewritten mini codes to complete tasks which she can execute. Check it out really not to hard and who know she Might be able to get you a beer! lol

https://ifttt.com