Posted: 12/19/2016 4:43:14 PM EDT
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I've had it sitting under my desk for about a year now, guess it's time to set it up. I remember there was a lot of excitement initially, you guys still feel that way?
What are some tips and how-to's? |
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I use mine to read audio books at night and tell it to stop reading in an hr when I think I may have fallen asleep.
I also figured out how to make it get the news from my local tv station website so when I ask for news it give me my local news instead of US. I use it to set my alarm for in the morning or timers. Lately I've been telling it to play Christmas music. Eventually I'm going to get some lights and stuff that I can command with it. There are a few skills you can download to it and do other stuff. Like another poster said. It really needs voice recognition or at least user setup wake up commands. I see mine light up sometime when those commercials come on. |
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I think it helps to have a prime membership, I take advantage of prime music quite a bit. I have home automation linked to the echo dot (lights (Cree Connect bulbs) and thermostat via Wink 2 Hub, A/V system via Harmony Hub and an outlet switcher). Have three echo dots, family room, bathroom and bedroom.
Some of the things I do on a daily basis: Alexa flash briefing (NPR news briefing for AM shower followed by an music I'm interested in hearing) Alexa shuffle [insert music genra or specific band/group] Alexa turn [on/off] the [living, family, dining] room lights Alexa dim the [living, family, dining] room lights [20-100] percent Alexa turn [on/off] the display (turns on/off the TV, A/V receiver, A/V amplifier, Fire TV box, cable box, and Stream Link) Alexa turn all lights [on/off] (all living, family and dining room lights grouped) Alexa turn everything [on/off] (all lights and the display grouped) Alexa turn the thermostat [up/down] [1] degree Alexa set the thermostat to [70] degrees Alexa ask Geneva to make hot water (we have a GE wifi connected refrigerator that has a K cup coffee dispenser and general hot water tap, need 3-4 minutes to heat the water (has other commands you never need but are available as well. Could be useful for preheating an oven if you had a wifi version of that?) Alexa set a timer for [30 minutes] Alexa [any useful/useless question for amusement or for local conversation assist] After kitchen remo is complete there will be 9 LED can lights controlled by a Lutron wifi wall dimmer/switch. Hesitant/researching about using a connected dead bolt and researching current state of connected door bells and garage door openers (no hurry to jump). |
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The best thing you can do with it is go out of town and torture your house-sitter. I have a buddy who was house sitting, so I used the app to remotely start blasting disco music late one night. It really helps if your buddy does not have much tech knowledge.
I have strings of text messages that still make me LOL from my buddy, when he house sit for me earlier this year. He finally just unplugged it because he couldn't figure it out! Eric 
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 At Home Robot Doesnt Understand Medical Emergency |
| If you have a Logitech harmony remote it can turn on and off your stereo/tv, start firetv, etc, and a few other useful things. If you have a z link hub (I use wink) it can control all of your lights. I also have door sensors and motion sensors integrated with wink/echo. You can get a networked thermostat and use it to control your temp schedule too. We use ours daily for lights, weather forecasts, news, kitchen timers, and would use them for temp controlling if I was in the us. |
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So far, I have it integrated into the house smart things controller, alarm controller and harmony hub. 'Alexa play xbox' and it will turn on the Xbox, projector and audio'. Alexa turn off the kitchen lights. I did a. IFTTT recipe to lock all of the house doors. It's been getting a ton of use.
I use AirPlay to stream whole home audio to airport expresses connected to mini amps. I'm trying to get the harmony hub to control my mac so it will play in different zones. So far, I've gotten it to play iTunes, but haven't figured out a way to get it to play the different zones yet. I'm tossing around the idea of using apple Automator, IFTTT and possibly Dropbox to do certain commands like "play only the living room zone" or more. I can create a dummy file that will be read by Automator and perform a macro - but I have a feeling my rudimentary knowledge of apple Automator is going to limit me without using some form of python or other macro type language. Having fun tinkering though. |
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Employee of mine's husband got one. His biggest advice, do not set it up near a TV.
That thing picks up shit it hears off the TV, and acts accordingly. Most times, it's worthless weather updates, and shit like that. Did you see the story where a news anchor said something about buying dollhouses, and shitload of Alexa owners had dollhouses ordered automatically? http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/7/14200210/amazon-alexa-tech-news-anchor-order-dollhouse |
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Quoted:
Bump I need to show the wife this thread after Christmas as I got her one She is tech savvy but it will be nice to show her how others are using it I've been putting in light switches in the house. My wife initially thought it was stupid, she's not totally wrong, but now that I have economy of scale she's using it. She's runs "Good Night" and "Good Morning" programs which turn various lights off and on depending on the routine. If you have kids, they will quickly learn to work it. My wife texted me the other morning, "Alexa woke me up playing the soundtrack to The Nutcracker at volume 10...fml". I would echo, no pun, the poster that said I wish it had voice recognition. Something as simple as knowing which commands to continue executing based on who gave it the command or being able to lock certain voices out of commands. For instance I never want my daughter to control the volume....everything is always volume 10. Speaking of, I need to ask Alexa to go to volume 11 and see what happens. |