Amazon Echo - anyone have one?

The lack of search engine / google means that my Alexa is a very good assistant for home automation, but everytime I ask her a question such as

How many seasons in X show or who played Y in TV series X - she's useless

Basically, if you don't have spotify, or Hive heating / lights don't bother.

Also - wish sonos would pull their finger out and get the alexa integration promised, its now March and they said early 2017. Actively stopping me buying more Sonos devices
 
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Chevens said:
anyone else not able to play amazon prime music right now? Get an 'unable to complete action' message myself
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I ask alexa to play something, she acknowledges, but does not play anything. I however ask her to play a radio station and she's on the case.
No idea what's going on, but music seems to be down for me?
 
AS_Platinum said:
I ask alexa to play something, she acknowledges, but does not play anything. I however ask her to play a radio station and she's on the case.
No idea what's going on, but music seems to be down for me?
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Their servers took a dump, I couldn't get on to prime video but it seems to be ok now.
 
TBirdUK said:
any chance you would build a bridge to sell?
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I could do the odd one -- do you have a raspi of some sort to run the linux part?

I'm going to order another batch of 3x pcb anyway, as I found a couple things to tweak (always the case!), I could mark one up if you like. I think I'll design the case tonight
 
da_mic_1530 said:
The lack of search engine / google means that my Alexa is a very good assistant for home automation, but everytime I ask her a question such as

How many seasons in X show or who played Y in TV series X - she's useless

Basically, if you don't have spotify, or Hive heating / lights don't bother.

Also - wish sonos would pull their finger out and get the alexa integration promised, its now March and they said early 2017. Actively stopping me buying more Sonos devices
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Totally agree with this, it's a shame as my 4 year old daughter likes asking her interesting things she would like to know the answers to and Alexa is just useless and can barely answer anything. Sometimes you seem to get lucky and she will answer. For example yesterday she answered the question "where do lions live"

I'm still pretty happy, we use it for music, often ask it the time, I add things to my shopping list, add things to my calendar and we control the lights. But there is still scope for it to be even better, I hope they continue to develop it.
 
I've had an Echo Dot for a few days. The unit is nice and small so where I've put it on top of a kitchen cupboard you wouldn't even know its there (unless it's night and you happen to be looking at one of the skylights and see the reflection of the ring of LEDs). The range on the microphones is surprisingly good. It's a pretty good piece of kit and sorts a few minor problems for me.

- Adding stuff to the shopping list. Quite often we'll note stuff that needs to go on the next Ocado order when we're in the kitchen so we'll tell Alexa to add stuff to the list. I've setup an applet in IFTTT that'll email us the list when we ask what is on it. Hopefully there will now be less occasions when we don't add something to the Ocado straight away and then later forget what it was.

- Kitchen timer. We're forever misplacing the kichen timer so it's great to be able to ask Alexa to set a timer. I'd like the volume of the alert sound to be higher so I may need to get a bluetooth speaker for the Dot.

- Turning on the coffee table lights in the lounge. We can either have the switches easy to reach which leaves a fair bit of cable visible on the coffee table or hidden away and awkward to reach. I've ordered TP-Link wifi plug which should arrive today and then I'll be able to turn the lights on and off with my voice.

- Controlling the heating. We're having Nest installed in a week or so and will be able to adjust the temperature by voice. This'll be more useful when I put a Dot upstairs.

I'd like to use the 'computer' wake word but for some unknown reason it very rarely hears my other half when she says it. Probably 9/10 times it won't hear her yet it works fine for me. If we use the Alexa wake word then it's perfect for us both.
 
The TP-Link wifi switch arrived a short while ago. Within about 10 minutes of it arriving I had it up and running as I wanted. Not bad considering that included setting up an account with TP-Link and learning how to add smart home devices into Alexa.

So now I can say 'Alexa, turn on lounge lamps' which I'm happy with. Adding more smart plugs will take a couple of minutes at most I think. Time to get a few more ordered.
 
the-evaluator said:
The TP-Link wifi switch arrived a short while ago. Within about 10 minutes of it arriving I had it up and running as I wanted. Not bad considering that included setting up an account with TP-Link and learning how to add smart home devices into Alexa.

So now I can say 'Alexa, turn on lounge lamps' which I'm happy with. Adding more smart plugs will take a couple of minutes at most I think. Time to get a few more ordered.
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TP-Link switches died for a while last week, apparently their 'cloud' thingy broke down. Thats *exactly* what I want NOT to happen in my place, that's why I went for non-cloud thingies.
 
deuse said:
I can't get my Hub 2 and 3rd gen lights working as they should.
I can turn the light on\off or dim\bright ok. But the Hue scenes won't work.
Like I try "Alexa, Savanna sunset in living room" I get "sorry I can't find a device with that name" :mad:

I've factory reset everything and started again with no luck. Can anyone advise me?
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Have you tried IFTTT instead? I know there is more latency but since IFTTT started to support Alexa I have gone mad with it...
 
BusError said:
TP-Link switches died for a while last week, apparently their 'cloud' thingy broke down. Thats *exactly* what I want NOT to happen in my place, that's why I went for non-cloud thingies.
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Yeah, I had that thought after setting my plug up. I won't be reliant on cloud computing for any of the stuff I'm going to do so when it breaks I can easily get at the plugs and get my lights back on.
 
Buserror - yes I have a first gen raspi but am an absolute novice, I'd love to give this a go if you have the time
 
BusError said:
TP-Link switches died for a while last week, apparently their 'cloud' thingy broke down. Thats *exactly* what I want NOT to happen in my place, that's why I went for non-cloud thingies.
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Wasn't just them a LOT of the internet died, even IFFFT were struggling as well, but you do make a valid point, the device should not need the cloud for day to day operations
 
Tomsonn said:
I have been using both Amazon Echo and Google Home. Amazon Echo launched earlier than Google Home. I think Amazon Echo is advance in few section from Google Home. Amazon Echo is better when you are purchasing something from online. It is always better to do a complete comparison before going to choose any option.
https://www.homesecuritylist.com/amazon-echo-vs-google-home/
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And you sound like a bot trying to drum up traffic for the name in your signature.
 
the-evaluator said:
I'd like to use the 'computer' wake word but for some unknown reason it very rarely hears my other half when she says it. Probably 9/10 times it won't hear her yet it works fine for me. If we use the Alexa wake word then it's perfect for us both.
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I've had this same issue, it doesn't hear me a good 6 times out of 10 for computer but almost always with Alexa. Would prefer computer but have had to stick with Alexa for now. Hopefully they improve this.
 
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