Amazon Echo - anyone have one?

stewski · 7 Oct 2017 at 11:10

[HB]Rugrat said:
I've loved mine dearly - and more importantly my missus loves it AND can work it (so it hasn't been thrown across the room like so many bits of technology before it). I'm toying with the idea of cancelling Amazon prime though after yet another missing delivery - we mostly use it for streaming radio and music so I guess these things are largely useless without Prime?

Just cancelled my prime, service has become a joke.
I recently got hue lights and was contemplating alexa, probably going the google route now.

Glaucus · 7 Oct 2017 at 11:12

[HB]Rugrat said:
I've loved mine dearly - and more importantly my missus loves it AND can work it (so it hasn't been thrown across the room like so many bits of technology before it). I'm toying with the idea of cancelling Amazon prime though after yet another missing delivery - we mostly use it for streaming radio and music so I guess these things are largely useless without Prime?

if you use the online chat and complain you'll get a free month everytime they miss a delivery.

stewski · 7 Oct 2017 at 11:15

Glaucus said:
if you use the online chat and complain you'll get a free month everytime they miss a delivery.

Last time I complained they offered exactly that, again. I told them not to bother, my time is worth more than the 8 quid and if I want this level of nonsense I'll go to ebay (which Amazon is currently worse than in my experience).

[HB]Rugrat · 7 Oct 2017 at 14:53

Yeah I've had a couple of months free membership but I'm at the point where waiting around for things that aren't turning up, waiting for investigations to be carried out and the hassle of ringing them is convincing me that it's not worth the hassle.

photoshop · 8 Oct 2017 at 23:28

Anyone know how the new Echo affects things like the Hue?
Is the bridge no longer necessary (as the echo now has a hub built in)?

Martynt74 · 9 Oct 2017 at 10:00

The Echo Plus has the built in hub so you shouldn't need anything else.

The dot/echo would still require another hub.

Jony27 · 9 Oct 2017 at 10:04

Spent most of my weekend putting together a raspberry pi powered Amazon Echo

Had all the things already so didn't need to buy anything, everything working apart from the music services(not supported)

Had fun just putting it together and quite useful for what it is, don't have any smart stuff in the apartment but mainly going to use it for traffic/weather/alarms/reminders/to do lists.

Martynt74 · 9 Oct 2017 at 10:06

Got a simple guide?

Is music planned to be supported or can you get it any other way?

deuse · 9 Oct 2017 at 10:07

Jony27 said:
Spent most of my weekend putting together a raspberry pi powered Amazon Echo

Had all the things already so didn't need to buy anything, everything working apart from the music services(not supported)

Had fun just putting it together and quite useful for what it is, don't have any smart stuff in the apartment but mainly going to use it for traffic/weather/alarms/reminders/to do lists.

Nice one

I have a friend who is trying to make a smart mirror with alexa built in.

Jony27 · 9 Oct 2017 at 11:40

Marvt74 said:
Got a simple guide?

Is music planned to be supported or can you get it any other way?

I followed this guide and used this to troubleshoot (believe me there was a lot of it!)

You'll need Raspbian Jessie 2.4.2(only available through NOOBS) as the newer versions of Stretch have issues.

deuse said:
Nice one

I have a friend who is trying to make a smart mirror with alexa built in.

I originally planned on using it for the Magic Mirror but decided against it when I couldn't be bothered getting the one way mirror and building the frame.

BusError · 9 Oct 2017 at 22:50

I have to say the streaming of spotify has gone seriously downhill. Basically in the evening I can't get it to work reliably at all. Also, Alexa is laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaging for sometime 10+ seconds to respond to simple commands. Rather annoying.

stewski · 9 Oct 2017 at 22:58

Jony27 said:
I followed this guide and used this to troubleshoot (believe me there was a lot of it!)

You'll need Raspbian Jessie 2.4.2(only available through NOOBS) as the newer versions of Stretch have issues.

I originally planned on using it for the Magic Mirror but decided against it when I couldn't be bothered getting the one way mirror and building the frame.

If I had a pi around I'd be looking at picroft/mycroft too (much as alexa has a lot of traction atm).
https://mycroft.ai/blog/mycroft-now-available-raspberry-pi-image/

LabR@t · 10 Oct 2017 at 06:10

I can use my son's to wake him up when I am work by using my phone app to say the alarm on his Alexa much to his annoyance.

Schizo · 10 Oct 2017 at 06:49

I'm still loving my echo's,never had a problem with the service amazon have and the echo's,both have been superb.

AndyCr15 · 10 Oct 2017 at 08:09

BusError said:
I have to say the streaming of spotify has gone seriously downhill. Basically in the evening I can't get it to work reliably at all. Also, Alexa is laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaging for sometime 10+ seconds to respond to simple commands. Rather annoying.

Surely that just points to you having connectivity issues?

Cob · 10 Oct 2017 at 14:09

Jony27 said:
Spent most of my weekend putting together a raspberry pi powered Amazon Echo

Had all the things already so didn't need to buy anything, everything working apart from the music services(not supported)

Had fun just putting it together and quite useful for what it is, don't have any smart stuff in the apartment but mainly going to use it for traffic/weather/alarms/reminders/to do lists.

I got excited there but it's pretty useless to me without Amazon Music access

Martynt74 · 16 Oct 2017 at 15:26

Argh, why didn't they bother to include a Line-Out on the Echo Show? Surely it's easy enough to do!

leaskovski · 16 Oct 2017 at 16:54

So here is a a couple of questions related to IFTTT applets that I want to call from my Dot.

1) My heating setup can be triggered by IFTTT, through their service they provide. Unfortunately it looks like their trigger service doesn't do ingredients, so I have about 3 different applets for different temperatures for each room/zone. First question, am I doing something wrong with IFTTT? If a service offer a way of say, setting a temperature, but you have to select the value when creating an applet that interacts with it, does that not mean I can create an applet that will take an ingredient and use that as the selected temp which would normally be set as part of the configuration for using that service?

2) I use my Android phone and Google Assistant to also trigger IFTTT applets. Is there anyway to share an applet that has been build for one service to run it on another? So I don't have to build the same applets for the other service, i.e. Have 12 applets for Alexa, and then duplicate the same things for Assistant?

VincentHanna · 18 Oct 2017 at 18:55

My Google home mini turned up today, it's so small but the sound quality is great and it's really clear considering the size.

chris_r · 20 Oct 2017 at 22:37

Hi guys

I seen Amazon are offering Sonos users a mini for only £25.

Could anyone possibly give me one of their codes as I would love to purchase one.

Thanks