Amazon Echo FAQ

Zascar

wrongtarget wrote: »

I don't think that's accurate, Zascar.
I can't post links but Google for "nest water heat" and click on the second result, titled "Can I have a Nest Thermostat installed if I have a hot water ...".

https://nest.com/uk/support/article/Can-I-have-a-Nest-Thermostat-installed-if-I-have-a-hot-water-programmer-or-if-my-current-thermostat-controls-both-home-heating-and-hot-water

Oh excellent! Thanks, good news. Will look into this - hopefully it will do the job

Vico1612 wrote: »

I'm using Honeywell Evohome with Echo .
Basic functions for now ( Set Living room temperature to x degrees works , but you can't yet set a time )

See I'm looking for something with a little more control. I just want to be able to set the times the heating comes on and off - and then 'boost' it via mobile (and hopefully echo) when I need to. Which ones can do this?

Zilog

v10 wrote: »

Go to Amazon developer website and log in with the same account associated with your echo. Click on 'Get Started' under Alexa Skills Kit, then Add new Skill.

Leave Language as US English and choose Flash Briefing Skill API, then follow the few simple steps as far as the Test stage. No need to publish as it's only for your own use. It'll then appear under your skills in your alexa app. Then just enable it.

You'll need an RSS feed to add, so for RTE I used http://www.rte.ie/news/rss/news-headlines.xml

Hi, hopefully v10 or another poster can help.
I've done all above, even added RTE logos. My 'RTE News Headlines' skill appears under 'Skills' ! 'Your Skills' in Alexa app, great! Enable skill from there and then click 'Manage in Flash Briefing'.
However I cannot get it to appear under 'Flash Briefing'. Only the defaults appear here - Sky News, BBC Minute, etc.

Have tried rebooting, disabling and enabling the skill, etc. without any success. Where have I gone wrong? Any suggestions appreciated!

yoshimitsu

Amazon Music Unlimited just launched in the US (this is different from Amazon Prime Music):
10 million songs (2m on Amazon Prime Music)
curated playlists
personalized stations
blablabla basically Spotify/Apple Music clone

$9.99 a month... down to $7.99/month if you're a Prime subscriber
Echo-only plan for $3.99

Not particularly interesting IMO but I'm hoping they wont pull the plug on Spotify.

BobbyT28

Zilog wrote: »

Hi, hopefully v10 or another poster can help.
I've done all above, even added RTE logos. My 'RTE News Headlines' skill appears under 'Skills' ! 'Your Skills' in Alexa app, great! Enable skill from there and then click 'Manage in Flash Briefing'.
However I cannot get it to appear under 'Flash Briefing'. Only the defaults appear here - Sky News, BBC Minute, etc.

Have tried rebooting, disabling and enabling the skill, etc. without any success. Where have I gone wrong? Any suggestions appreciated!

I've the same problem.

v10

Zilog wrote: »

Hi, hopefully v10 or another poster can help.
I've done all above, even added RTE logos. My 'RTE News Headlines' skill appears under 'Skills' ! 'Your Skills' in Alexa app, great! Enable skill from there and then click 'Manage in Flash Briefing'.
However I cannot get it to appear under 'Flash Briefing'. Only the defaults appear here - Sky News, BBC Minute, etc.

Have tried rebooting, disabling and enabling the skill, etc. without any success. Where have I gone wrong? Any suggestions appreciated!

Strange works for me .. It appears in my flash briefing and in fact I've disabled all the default ones. I'm sure you have already but be sure you followed all previous step correctly .. also make sure it's the same amazon account ?

bellucio

BobbyT28 wrote: »

I've the same problem.

Same for me as well...
I log into https://developer.amazon.com, where i have the skill created and available.

Logged into alexa.amazon.co.uk, where I can see the Skill (it does have "DevUS" on the Skill icon all right if that makes any difference.)

I can enable the skill, but no luck when clicking on "Manage in Flash Briefing"

I have an account with both amazon.com & amazon.co.uk under the same email.

My Echo is set up under the amazon.co.uk one, as I had issue under the .com where the times etc were US

v10

bellucio wrote: »

Logged into alexa.amazon.co.uk, where I can see the Skill (it does have "DevUS" on the Skill icon all right if that makes any difference.)

I wonder is this the problem, I use alexa.amazon.com. I does say on the developer.amazon.com Skill Information section that Flash Briefing is unavailable for German (D.E) and English (U.K) .. so it's possible you can't enable it from .co.uk ?!

bellucio

v10 wrote: »

I wonder is this the problem, I use alexa.amazon.com. I does say on the developer.amazon.com Skill Information section that Flash Briefing is unavailable for German (D.E) and English (U.K) .. so it's possible you can't enable it from .co.uk ?!

Will check it out tomorrow and come back with my findings, but you may well be right

I had it set up under amazon.com, but the times were all US based. The only way I found to get the correct timezone was set up through amazon.co.uk..

v10

bellucio wrote: »

I had it set up under amazon.com, but the times were all US based. The only way I found to get the correct timezone was set up through amazon.co.uk..

Is that still the case though ? I've no problem with mine using .com , and northern Irish address.

bellucio

v10 wrote: »

Is that still the case though ? I've no problem with mine using .com , and northern Irish address.

It was definitely an issue for me.. Found instructions earlier in this thread to fix it, and worked away..
But I'm going to retry again to set up under.com and get that custom. Skill working...

loughrey2887

Unfortunately us Irish users won't be able to use Amazon Music Unlimited unless you have a UK credit card. I tried to avail of the free trial on the US Amazon store but was told that you must have a credit or debit card issued by a US bank to access the service, something they don't require for Amazon Prime. Change the banking address and currency to the US in one-click doesn't get around it. It seems Amazon is reading the card's IBAN numbers and filtering out non-US cards. I have no doubt they will do the same with the UK service. I know that Amazon struggled to carve out a deal with the Music industry and I assume that one of the conditions of the deal was that Amazon apply heavy restrictions on access to the service, including insuring it is strictly accessed by UK and US residents only. Since they haven't released the Echo to the Irish market and have never made Prime video or Amazon Prime Music available here, I have no doubt they'll never make this music service available here. We have to stick to Spotify or the limited Prime Music if you're a Prime member.

I don't believe they will pull the plug on Spotify as the Prime exclusive price of 7.99 or the Echo exclusive price of 3.99 makes it automatically more appealing to Echo and Prime users over Spotify which costs 9.99 and has about the same content as Amazon Unlimited. Not to mention the Unlimited exclusive commands that won't be available to Spotify. If I could use Amazon Unlimited I'd instantly leave Spotify Premium and switch to Amazon Unlimited. I can see many who can access these subsidised prices doing the same, and that's exactly what Amazon want happening. But since Irish customers will never be able to access the Amazon Unlimited service Spotify is our only service.

loughrey2887

bellucio wrote: »

Same for me as well...
I log into https://developer.amazon.com, where i have the skill created and available.

Logged into alexa.amazon.co.uk, where I can see the Skill (it does have "DevUS" on the Skill icon all right if that makes any difference.)

I can enable the skill, but no luck when clicking on "Manage in Flash Briefing"

I have an account with both amazon.com & amazon.co.uk under the same email.

My Echo is set up under the amazon.co.uk one, as I had issue under the .com where the times etc were US

There's a way to get the US Echo to give times in Irish time. I have my Echo under my amazon.com account with Pandora etc. up and running and she gives the correct Irish time when I ask her and wakes me up at the right time. There's a way to modify the timezone on the desktop alexa app to UK/Irish time while remaining on the US Alexa service. LOL so many people who have ordered the US Echo before the UK release had to put up with being unable to use the alarm etc. not knowing there has always been a way to change the time zone to Irish time long before it was released in Europe. With Spotify, Irish time, IFTTT, and Pandora on the US service makes no sense to be on the UK service as there's nothing good on it.

JAMM222

im thinking about setting up my own news channel for this, my plan is to do a 1 minute update every morning at 7am and around 8pm every evening. It will include irish news headlines, local weather and dublin traffic updates, im also open to suggestions of anything that people might be interested in. are there any developers that can help me? where is the best place to get the feed from? rss or should i upload a video to youtube every morning

Cabaal

JAMM222 wrote: »

im thinking about setting up my own news channel for this, my plan is to do a 1 minute update every morning at 7am and around 8pm every evening. It will include irish news headlines, local weather and dublin traffic updates, im also open to suggestions of anything that people might be interested in. are there any developers that can help me? where is the best place to get the feed from? rss or should i upload a video to youtube every morning

Surely a better way would be to setup something to just ripp the audio from http://www.rte.ie/news/player/live/7/ and play that on Echo,

Alot less work in the long run and the whole thing can be automated

mrcheez

So it's getting close to the date where I choose whether or not to go ahead with the Dot order. I've had a scan through this thread and summarised the status of functionality catering to my specific requirements.

My situation: based in Dublin and have Revolut card and co.uk amazon account if any of those are relevant. I also don't have Spotify or Amazon Prime yet. I have a crappy phone so Alexa app isn't an option.

REQUIREMENT|WORKING?
Play RTE radio|Yes but must change address to Northern Ireland(http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=101278796&postcount=391)
Play RTE radio as alarm clock|Only by using workaround
Report correct time|Not sure. Perhaps with Northern Ireland fix?
Weather for Dublin|have to say "in Dublin"
Play Music from free account|Not possible (though I think I can get 30 days free on Amazon Music to initially try out the Echo??)
Play Music from paid account|Works fine, but need to pay €9.99 a month for Spotify


Are all the above correct?

sweetie

mrcheez wrote: »

So it's getting close to the date where I choose whether or not to go ahead with the Dot order. I've had a scan through this thread and summarised the status of functionality catering to my specific requirements.

My situation: based in Dublin and have Revolut card and co.uk amazon account if any of those are relevant. I also don't have Spotify or Amazon Prime yet. I have a crappy phone so Alexa app isn't an option.

REQUIREMENT|WORKING?
Play RTE radio|Yes but must change address to Northern Ireland(http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=101278796&postcount=391)
Play RTE radio as alarm clock|Only by using workaround
Report correct time|Not sure. Perhaps with Northern Ireland fix?
Weather for Dublin|have to say "in Dublin"
Play Music from free account|Not possible (though I think I can get 30 days free on Amazon Music to initially try out the Echo??)
Play Music from paid account|Works fine, but need to pay €9.99 a month for Spotify


Are all the above correct?

no, have a look in bargain alerts re: spotify pricing

bk

"Report correct time" works fine with either a Dublin address (probably others too, haven't tried) or Northern Irish one

"Play Music from free account" If you subscribe to Amazon prime using a Revolut card, then you should be able to use Prime Music. I assume the same will be true for the soon to launch Amazon Music Unlimited accounts.

Having said that Spotify is well worth it IMO.

Everything else is correct.

mrcheez

bk wrote: »

"Play Music from free account" If you subscribe to Amazon prime using a Revolut card, then you should be able to use Prime Music. I assume the same will be true for the soon to launch Amazon Music Unlimited accounts.

I guess the point I was making about playing music "from free account" is that it's not possible to play music without paying for a service, even for a few hundred songs.

Is this right?

e.g. do Amazon give a free account I can try out the Echo with initially, to upload 5 or 6 albums or whatever, and perhaps in 2017 I'll sign up for a service?


Also is not having the Alexa app going to be a problem for me? I can borrow a phone temporarily to initially set it up. I'm getting a new phone next year though, but have other things to pay for in the meantime (getting house redone!)

paulbok

mrcheez wrote: »

I guess the point I was making about playing music "from free account" is that it's not possible to play music without paying for a service, even for a few hundred songs.

Is this right?

e.g. do Amazon give a free account I can try out the Echo with initially, to upload 5 or 6 albums or whatever, and perhaps in 2017 I'll sign up for a service?


Also is not having the Alexa app going to be a problem for me? I can borrow a phone temporarily to initially set it up. I'm getting a new phone next year though, but have other things to pay for in the meantime (getting house redone!)

You can login via a pc browser instead of using the ap and do your setup there. No need for the ap apart from the handiness of it, especially to access your shopping and to-do lists on the move.

degsie

mrcheez wrote: »

I guess the point I was making about playing music "from free account" is that it's not possible to play music without paying for a service, even for a few hundred songs.

Is this right?

e.g. do Amazon give a free account I can try out the Echo with initially, to upload 5 or 6 albums or whatever, and perhaps in 2017 I'll sign up for a service?

You can start a free Amazon Prime trial, provided you haven't subscribed to it before. You can then load some songs (500 I think) to your library. Once your prime trial is finished you would not have any access to previously uploaded content unless you continue your subscription.

wrongtarget

Correct time does work with Dublin address.

I must say I'm surprised by how much people care about RTE radio :P The more you know

bk

So I've made a list of the issues that exist with the Echo. Please remember these represent the 10% of features that have issues, the other 90% works fantastic. So please don't take it out of constant.

Not working in the UK & Ireland
===========================
- IFTTT, being fixed *
- Can't set default music player. Always have to say "with spotify", being fixed *

* From what people say.

Not working in Ireland
===================
- Many Irish addresses don't work, but you can usually set it to a street near by, in particular in Dublin.
- Have to say "in Dublin" "in Cork" when asking about the weather.
- Selecting radio stations to play by voice on tune in radio is poor, in particular for common Irish radio stations. (work around, select the station with the Alexa app and then do the rest of the control with voice).

Not working in the US, UK & Ireland
=======================
- Being able to play music from multiple Amazon Echo's in sync. I suspect we should get this soon as it is a major missing feature that Google Home has. They won't want to be left behind.
- Ask Echo to play video on the TV. Google Home can do this with chrome cast. I suspect it will come to Echo, but for FireTV.
- Full support for Logitech Harmony. There is current, simple support using the yonomi app

The Holy Grail (missing from both Echo and Google Home)
====================================
- The ability to be able to identify the voice that is speaking to it and switch profile so that it can use your playlists, todo lists, etc. and just generally use better personal context.

At the moment, this is severely missing feature. For a device that is supposed to sit in the middle of your human and thus used by multiple people, it is pretty damn important IMO.

Zascar

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/10/13/13268142/amazon-echo-alexa-any-do-integration

mrcheez

bk wrote: »

- Selecting radio stations to play by voice on tune in radio is poor, in particular for common Irish radio stations. (work around, select the station with the Alexa app and then do the rest of the control with voice).

or to set your location to Northern Ireland right? This would be a major issue for me if I had to use an app to play Irish radio.

bk

mrcheez wrote: »

or to set your location to Northern Ireland right? This would be a major issue for me if I had to use an app to play Irish radio.

Well it didn't really seem to make a difference for me. Some others have reported that it helped them. I can try later again.

bk

Zascar wrote: »

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/10/13/13268142/amazon-echo-alexa-any-do-integration

Great news and it seems to be a general todo list API, so other todo apps like todist and wunderlist are also likely to gain support

EDIT: Didn't take todoist 2 minutes to add support too!
https://blog.todoist.com/2016/10/13/todoist-alexa-integration/

donegal.

mrcheez wrote: »

or to set your location to Northern Ireland right? This would be a major issue for me if I had to use an app to play Irish radio.

if irish radio station are really important to you, something you'd plan to listen to alot, and you'd prefer not to have to use a smartphone app all the time then i wouldn't recommend the echo

adox

On using Spotify, can you get it to play a particular album or can it just play an artist or playlist?

mrcheez

donegal. wrote: »

if irish radio station are really important to you, something you'd plan to listen to alot, and you'd prefer not to have to use a smartphone app all the time then i wouldn't recommend the echo

Why is that? People say they have workarounds.

mrcheez

adox wrote: »

On using Spotify, can you get it to play a particular album or can it just play an artist or playlist?

Found this which might be handy:

https://www.quora.com/Once-I-integrate-my-Spotify-account-to-Alexa-Echo-how-do-I-ask-Alexa-to-play-Spotify-songs

[song] Alexa, play With or Without You on Spotify
[playlist] Alexa, play Star Chamber on Spotify
[artist] Alexa, play Jay-Z on Spotify