Amazon says putting Alexa to work in your smart home's easy. Here's exactly what you need

LOS ANGELES--The poster at one of the flashy new Amazon Books stores was inviting. "Smart Home Made Easy -- want to get started but don't know where to start?" I think most customers there would raise their hands and say, "That's me." Amazon's list put hard-to-understand tech geekdom into words we all get. What it didn't do was spell out the dollars that would be needed to be invested or how some of this stuff might work.