Amazon Echo - anyone have one?

SPG said:
Awww need a hug ?

Still not convinced by any of it, and no valid argument to try it out.
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Pssst... We still don't care that you don't get it... And we still don't care if you don't want one...

I spent £100 on it and use it multiple times a day, so getting good value for money out of it ;)

Can you please go and get some attention in another thread now please...

Merry Xmas!
 
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Mrs unwrapped ours this morning, looking forward to repurposing a Raspberry Pi and setting up IFTTT.

No reason to own one, pfft. No imagination if you can't see the purpose.
 
One will be opened shortly...by a 60 year old male. He has no raspberry pi.

What will he be able to use it for?

He has no smart tv, no computers etc (just an iPad). No idea why he wanted one tbh.
 
The thing is the Dot is honestly at a price point where to a lot of people that's disposable income.

Just last week I bought two friends lunch for more, with no expectation of it being returned other than good banter the next time we catch up.

£50 for a novetlty was a price worth paying. Picking up a second for £40 when I figured out how useful it can be made sense. Still trying to justify buying more but eagerly waiting for improvements to the ecosystem of supported products to tip the balance.
 
Morning and Merry Christmas folks :)



My wife got me an Echo for Christmas and, oddly, a Pi 3. I'll be exploring what I can do with the Echo today but I see folks talking of connecting a Pi for some reason. What can I do with this? My Google-Fu merely suggests making a homebrew Echo, is that it or am I missing something?

Oh and if anyone has any other tips for this Echo please share, I'm a bit out of the loop with tech like this :D
 
Merry Christmas. :)

Here's a starter for ten:

ScoobyDoo said:
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.
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Cheers Randal :)



This thing is bloody amazing. Honestly what a fantastic gadget, and all it's connected to at the moment is WiFi, we haven't even linked a Prime account yet. I'll be spending the next few hours exploring what it can and can't do, and perhaps start setting up the Pi.


I can safely say that this is a life changing purchase, I will spend the rest of my days firmly anchored in the claws of the Prime-sphere :D
 
I got an Amazon Dot for Christmas.

From what I understand, I can use it to control our Bosch Home Connect oven which I'm particularly excited about trying.

I'll also use it to control the sonos.

Does anybody know if there are any curtain rails that it can control out of the box? Not a diy/raspberry pi bodge. Something like a silent gliss?
 
Got a Dot for Christmas today. It's pretty good but it does have problems understanding me. Even saying "Alexa" is picked up all the time. Not sure if it's down to the positioning so I'm going to experiment later.

Kinobestew - how do you control your Sonos with it? I didn't think Sonos were releasing a Skill till January at the very earliest.
 
Bluecube said:
Kinobestew - how do you control your Sonos with it? I didn't think Sonos were releasing a Skill till January at the very earliest.
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Ahh, I might not be able to then. I just assumed sonos was one of the main things it could be used for. That's a shame then.

It would be great if they made it so alexa talked through the sonos system all around the house.
 
Has anyone VLAN'd off their IOT devices?

Going to segregate all of the media stuff onto a separate network, only thing it needs access to is my media library so Plex can function. Happy with that.
 
Anyone having trouble connecting their WEMO lights? Get it to scan for the devices and it finds nothing. Troubleshooting and documentation online is rubbish.

At parents house and they have a Talk Talk router and have tried forcing both on the 2.4ghz band to ensure that was not the issue and still doesn't work. Had to reset all the WEMO bits and now the Echo dot as they both seemed to have issues forgetting the SSIDs so ended up having to disable the 5ghz radio.

Having now reset both the echo dot and WEMO bits it still can't find them. Am I missing something? Guides just say scan and it should work and doesn't offer much more than 'have you tried turning it off and on again?'

I work as a network/VoIP engineer and this is more frustrating than any enterprise stuff I've had to work with...

Cheers.
 
Get Sonos working with your Echo by using an app called Yonomi on your phone.

Had it working for a while

I also still use Yonomi for controlling my harmony kit as it's more flexible than the recently release official harmony skill in the U.K. (also shown in the vid)
 
Got a second echo for the bedroom today and a dot for the office! Am addicted to these things, they're more than worth it to me the amount of use they get and how helpful they are especially with the other automation stuff
 
Definitely.

Got my parents a Dot for the living room and like it so much I'm getting myself one. Gonna put it in my bedroom, and also ordering the Philips Hue Starter Kit (just white), a bluetooth sound bar for the TV, and lamps etc for the bulbs to go in. At some point when back in stock will get one of the TP-Link Smart Plugs for the TV as well!

Want to make my room like Star Trek, haha.
 
syke said:
Definitely.

Got my parents one for the living room and like it so much I'm getting myself one. Gonna put it in my bedroom, and also ordering the Philips Hue Starter Kit (just white), a bluetooth sound bar for the TV, and lamps etc for the bulbs to go in. At some point when back in stock will get one of the TP-Link Smart Plugs for the TV as well!

Want to make my room like Star Trek, haha.
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If you are getting the Hue, I recommend the sensor if the lights are used in places like hallway or stairs.
 
Raymond Lin said:
If you are getting the Hue, I recommend the sensor if the lights are used in places like hallway or stairs.
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Ultimately i'll look into this, starting with just my bedroom with hue for now. Long term i'll probably look into doing the whole house but will slowly integrate.

Also just added the hue dimmer switch to my basket as well.

Hue/Echo = addiction already.

Anything else?! Haha!
 
Tado for voice controlled heating. Saved me when I was feeling ill. Didn't have to reach for phone in bedroom as couldnt find it and didn't want to even wake up when feeling like death. Alexa, turn up heating to 21 degrees. Done and dusted and helped me feel better.

That is just an advantage to a great product that just works and the geofencing for heating is a godsend for me and the Mrs with her shift patterns.
 
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