Amazon Echo - anyone have one?

Or "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn of entertainment center" :D

All i want is :

"Alexa, turn X on/off" and have the activity trigger
"Alexa, pause X"
etc.

It does the same rubbish with my volume too, turns up by a factor of 6 instead of 1.

Maybe i need to look at Yonomi and IFTTT instead.
 
randal said:
I've just got back from me Mum's, and my step Dad has just bought one of these. I'm impressed, so impressed I'm tempted to get the one I bought the Mrs out from under the tree. :D

The Amazon Music thing is a definite plus for me, beyond excellent in fact. However I'd really want to tie it in to the home cinema setup to get the best of it. My amp supports Airplay, which the Echo sadly doesn't... so it looks like I'll need to get the Bluetooth module for my amp to tie it together. Kind of wish I'd bought the Dot now instead, hardwired and saved the cash...

Any success stories tying into home cinema setups? Which route did people go down? What's the behaviour if the home cinema isn't on? Does it power it up, or revert to the internal speaker?
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randal said:
stuff
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It reverts to it's own speaker when turned off.

I set mine up to use the soundbar when i switch it to bluetooth and used it this morning to listen to the radio. After a while the soundbar switched itself off, it does that when the TV is off but didn't realise it would do it while being connected via bluetooth.
 
hyperseven said:
I like to listen to a local radio station, 'Key 103'.
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Use the Radioplayer skill instead, it's tailored to your location and remembers what you listened to. I had a similar thing when I wanted to listen to TalkRadio on the Echo, the default TuneIn service would play some American channel.

"Ask Radioplayer to play Key 103" worked first time for me, I got the UK (Manchester) local station Key 103 which I assume you want. :)
 
Em3bbs said:
Use the Radioplayer skill instead, it's tailored to your location and remembers what you listened to. I had a similar thing when I wanted to listen to TalkRadio on the Echo, the default TuneIn service would play some American channel.

"Ask Radioplayer to play Key 103" worked first time for me, I got the UK (Manchester) local station Key 103 which I assume you want. :)
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Cheers for that, will give it a go tonight :D
 
hyperseven said:
Cheers for that, will give it a go tonight :D
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No worries! You have to install the skill from the Alexa app, and the first time you say "Alexa, start Radioplayer" it asks for your location if I recall. Seems to work much better than TuneIn though, I guess because of the amount of radio stations there are online these days!
 
I've had one a while and intergrated it into my raspberry pi domoticz build using the Ha Bridge running on the PI.

It makes the echo much more functional.

I can now say 'Alexa turn on the tv' and she does her stuff... Turns on the TV, the Tivo box, followed by the amplifier and switches to hdmi one.

The same again for 'Alexa turn on the xbox' , switches inputs on the amplifer.

Ive also got her to turn on/off the heating, lighting, locate my phone, turn the bluetooth on the phone etc etc.
 
Meh
Don't see the point personally, I have no "smart" stuff and I'm not spending money on any of it its FAR too expensive for what it is. I dont have Prime which is needed for the music function, I'm not paying for that either, no way.

Still far too early I think for this sort of stuff unless your willing to throw money at it and put up with the wonky voice commands where she will only do something if you say it in a specific way.
 
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Perhaps for the reasonable price of a Dot, you could give it a go and see if it changes your mind instead. Coupled with the API and development of custom skills you can develop an incredibly powerful system. As ScoobyDoo mentions in the post above yours, there's a wealth of open source potential for not much bucks to be had.
 
MatsyLR said:
Meh
Don't see the point personally, I have no "smart" stuff and I'm not spending money on any of it its FAR too expensive for what it is. I dont have Prime which is needed for the music function, I'm not paying for that either, no way.

Still far too early I think for this sort of stuff unless your willing to throw money at it and put up with the wonky voice commands where she will only do something if you say it in a specific way.
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You don't need prime for the music function, you do need spotify if you don't though, or it uses tunein for radio services.

I had a right laugh this morning with mine, and the in laws in NZ, it's not out over there yet and they were talking to Alexa over skype, they asked her to sing song, so it sang 'the holly and the ivy', quite funny. I'm sure it's uses will grow even more as time goes by too. Me personally, i think it's £130 well spent.
 
"Alexa, show me the way to amarillo" :)

Hum... I think I'm the first person to find this... can't see any reference to it anywhere!

Think I've also found this one... after reading you could do "Alexa, make me a sandwich" try "Alexa, sudo make me a sandwich" :)

EDIT: No wait, sudo one has been found! :)
 
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I did the amarillo one the other day, along with the woodchuck one. She has a sense of humour. I asked her if she loves me too.
 
ok since siri is basically a pile of poo and having watched these things in reviews i cant really see any practical need for them unless your hands were full of lard and you desperately wanted to change track on spotify then whats the point of them?
 
jas72 said:
ok since siri is basically a pile of poo and having watched these things in reviews i cant really see any practical need for them unless your hands were full of lard and you desperately wanted to change track on spotify then whats the point of them?
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Want it in 1 word?

Laziness.

I am too lazy to get out of the sofa to turn off the light int he ceiling but leaving the light behind the TV on to watch a movie....too lazy to pick up my phone to use an app, too lazy unlock it and slide the bar to dim down the lights.

I am too lazy to google the weather, i just ask.

Or it's just cool to show off to friends when to come round.
 
ScoobyDoo said:
I've had one a while and integrated it into my raspberry pi domoticz build using the Ha Bridge running on the PI.
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how long did that take ?

Work out of the box plug and play?

Sorry about that seems like you've found some good use for it ScoobyDoo however the AI would need to be way better before I even think about getting one.

Siri is permanently off on my iphone, complete waste of apples time but they had the money to throw at it then let 15 million people beta test it :)
 
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