Amazon Echo - anyone have one?

I had the Echo for a birthday present today, really nice bit of tech from my initial play with it, although i can see to get things working with it is going to be expensive, ordered some TP-Link power connectors so that i can turn lamps off with the Echo, also ordered a separate Dot so that i can have the Echo in the kitchen and the Dot connected to an Amplifier im my lounge, which should work well from what i have read.

What i cant work out and from reading other posts, there is no way to tell it to look at a locally stored MP3 music collection, which is a real shame and you are therefore reliant on buying into Sportify/AmazonMusic/etc which are all at an additional monthly cost, signed up for the 30 day trials which are working well so will see how things go, im guessing at this point though that Sportify will be the most cost effective route without having to also buy into Amazon Prime.

So far its worked really well and i can see its something that can be fun and practical to use on a day to day basis with integrated devices in the house.

I bought a dot a while back as a gadget that I expected to never use.

Ours sits in the kitchen and my wife uses it all the time , mostly for music (we have prime) and I use it for audio books.

It is of note that I have not bothered to connect the dot to a better set of speakers as although the speaker isn't great it is no worse than most of the FM radios we have had in the kitchen in the past.

So amazon prime music playlists, digital radio and linked with the frankly excellent audible audio book service and I have grown to love Alexa.

Oh and she loves me , she tells me (I suspect one day my wife will drop the dot down the toilet because of this).

Got some! Although to use the Hue properly I think I need another Dot upstairs.

To power it I actually am using the USB port in my Xbox One

I can't seem to find Harmony skill in Smart Home in the Alexa app, has it been removed?

Raymond Lin said:

I can't seem to find Harmony skill in Smart Home in the Alexa app, has it been removed?

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It's only available in the US at the moment.

Ah, I thought I was going nuts or the app is broken.

Think you can use yonomi for now.

Or HA-Bridge? Got that working on a RPi with Harmony and my LightwaveRF stuff

I use my Echo only for playing music through Prime for £3.99 for a month. As for all the other stuff it can do, hmm the novelty soon wore off. It's quicker just looking at your phone and clicking the BBC app to see what the news is. Same with the weather. Half the time the Echo doesn't understand your question or answers with something totally unrelated.
Hive heating can either be on or off. You can't set the timer. Very basic.
As a music player the speaker is quite good and that is that, but for anything else Google Now on my phone is far more intelligent.

albert said:

Hive heating can either be on or off. You can't set the timer. Very basic.

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The skills are constantly updating, so it looks like Hive has changed quite a bit in the short time ago since you used it, so for heating now you can do the following:

Alexa, tell hive to turn the heating on to 20 degrees
Alexa, tell hive to turn the heating off
Alexa, tell hive to boost my heating

I would expect them to add things like "Alexa, ask Hive to turn the heating on at 6am tomorrow", that seems to be the obvious next step. I'm not sure what Nest or Netatmo (or others) offer, maybe they already do that but I have a Hive here.

BTW the Alexa app continuously fails to start on my Nexus 5. White screen. Bloody annoying. I use it on the nexus 9 tablet and it works.

Hey, I've had my dot for a month and the echo for three weeks. the dot is in the living room connected to my soundbar and the echo is in the bedroom.

I signed up to amazon music with the dot and use it most days for listening to my Favourite artists on amazon music, I have no smart items for it to control but that may change at Christmas!!

Echo gets used every night for music to settle me off to sleep and is a much more elegant solution to my usual set up which involves my bedroom media centre PC a 10m aux lead and a micro HiFii.

In the mornings after cancelling Alexa's alarm I ask for the news and whats the traffic like as i stumble off to the toilet WIN!

Its not all without fault though asking Alexa "play a place for us to dream by placebo " stumps her but asking "play the album a place for us to dream" works fine to which she responds "playing: a place for us to dream by placebo" weird.

I haven't used any skills they all seem pants to be honest, if I get any smart home items then I will obviously.

What id like to be able to do is use Alexa to stream my own content over my network, but haven't really looked it to it at all. in app integration would be excellent.

I have used the dot with Bluetooth and it offers impressive range I forgot to disconnect it from the Bluetooth soundbar in the bedroom when I moved the dot the the living room the dot had no sound only realising when I asked Alexa to turn volume to 10

All in all I think the dot and the echo are fantastic pieces of equipment that just work.

I must state that I did not buy these items and was given them free of charge.


by my Wife. lol

Anyone know if a jack splitter affects sound quality at all? I'd like to have one of my Dots connected to the PC speakers without having to switch source all the time, i'm think 78p for this vs £50 for a bluetooth speaker.

NexusK said:

Anyone know if a jack splitter affects sound quality at all? I'd like to have one of my Dots connected to the PC speakers without having to switch source all the time, i'm think 78p for this vs £50 for a bluetooth speaker.

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I connected mine to my home cinema, the sound quality is below par. The sound from Amazon Music through Fire TV is much better. I wouldn't spend too much money into getting expensive speakers for it.

Ordered an adapter anyway, if it sounds crap splitting it doesn't matter at that price i suppose. If i have to buy another speaker i will, it'd just be nice to have it coming out the PC speaker in that room to save adding anymore clutter or having to switch source.

Raymond Lin said:

I connected mine to my home cinema, the sound quality is below par. The sound from Amazon Music through Fire TV is much better. I wouldn't spend too much money into getting expensive speakers for it.

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I did a swap from a Logitech BT Adapter to an Echo Dot and i didn't notice any degradation in the sound quality, that could be because the Logitech BT Adapter wasn't fantastic to begin with, but for pumping out some music through a larger speaker system i thought it was fine.

A couple of TP-Link HS100 plug adapters turned up today, so my large lamps in the lounge are now connected to these, it was easy to setup the group in the app and now when i walk into the room if its dark i can just say "Alexa turn on lights" and the lights come on, makes it easier to turn the lights off when going to bed of an evening by just asking for the lights to be turned off as i walk up the stairs.

The next thing to be delivered is a Harmony Remote Control so that Alexa can turn on the TV/Sky-Box etc from verbal commands, which i hear works well.

Raymond Lin said:

I connected mine to my home cinema, the sound quality is below par. The sound from Amazon Music through Fire TV is much better. I wouldn't spend too much money into getting expensive speakers for it.

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Do you have to select the Dot input on your amp or is it automatically selected?

Why did i become interested in the Echo after the deals finished

I really fancy the echo but don't fancy paying £150 for it when it's been £100 for a while. I can't believe i missed it.

wez130 said:

Why did i become interested in the Echo after the deals finished

I really fancy the echo but don't fancy paying £150 for it when it's been £100 for a while. I can't believe i missed it.

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Wasn't it only £100 to Prime members who pre-ordered? Black Friday deals had its down to £130.

If it was £100 again, I would buy another 2 for sure.

Apart from being a speaker, I don't get this..... does the novelty not wear off on stuff like this? Not to mention feeling like a tit when speaking to it.

I seemed to have peaked tech wise.. A few years ago when this was a pipe dream I would have thought I'd be all over stuff like this, but the latest wave of tech like this and home automation etc I just don't get.

You spend quite a bit of cash buying it, then a bit more on accessories and then a lot of time tinkering, playing and customising... it doesn't seem to be that revolutionary or convenient.

Maybe I'm getting old.