Amazon Alexa and Echo FAQ

MrSzyslak

My thoughts are with ye both, must be a very dramatic nightmare Christmas.

statto25

Got an Echo today. Great surprise and already impressed. Is there any trick to getting it to recognise my address? It comes up when I start to type it but won't let me save it. It reckons I'm in Shropshire when I'm in Mayo!

mossym

TheRebelRam wrote: »

Right, Christmas is yet again turning into a technology nightmare
I have got amazon echo from uk, can't get app, any links I saw before won't work. Apple support is not working to remove my card when changing to UK address.
Any step by step simple guide to help me get Alexa going???

shep1959 wrote: »

Got the Amazon echo and am having the Christmas morning techy blues.
Have an Amazon uk account and have samsung 6 phone, but wont let me download app from play store. Logged onto my laptop to see if I can download to windows and then somehow get it over to my phone, but having trouble there also.
Could anyone please save me reading hundreds of pages on this subject and give me the dummies guide to setting this up in Ireland?

Would make my christmas

on a pc go to alexa.amazon.co.uk and you can set it up in minutes from there

sk8board

Same story here this morning - I can change store, but as I have an imatch subscription I need to cancel it and wait for it to expire .... next September!
Might just wait for Amazon to get their sh1t together and put the app into the Irish store.

Meanwhile will get it set up on PC

UPDATE: set up from the PC was a breeze - now I just need the app

Irish Gunner

You can find the app online or use a proxy to change play store to US and download it that way.

Have fun...

fionny

For Android:

Just download the Alexa APK - You will need to enable other sources in android first (some variation of these instructions) https://www.applivery.com/blog/android-unknown-sources/

APK can be found here: http://www.apkmonk.com/app/com.amazon.dee.app/

for iOS its also possible to get the app (i did it the other morning)

1. Open the App Store
2. Scroll to the very bottom and tap your apple ID.
3. Select Sign Out
4. Then tap the same button and select create account.
5. Select the UK... now when the T&C's appear hit cancel (apparently if you proceed at this point it will require a credit card from that country)
6. When you hit cancel you should see the app store change to pounds.
7. Search for Alexa and click get.
8. When it asks you again select create apple id, select uk and proceed though everything
9. Select payment type of NONE.
10. Follow all the rest and verify your account then download.
    
11. Top Tip if you use a gmail account you can use your regular email address with a + and anything else, example if my email was boards@gmail.com i could type board+itunesuk@gmail.com and still get the mail just fine... you can also insert fullstops anywhere in a gmail address (before the @) and still get it also.
    
12. Finally after app is downloaded go back into App Store. Sign out and then sign back into your regular account.... job done.

fionny

for address within Alexa just about the only address that works is O'Connell Street in dublin annoyingly... hopefully when they officially launch in Ireland they will enable irish address properly. Bing maps just plain sucks donkey bits.

mossym

Got two dots and a harmony elite this morning. All set up now and working flawlesly, kids love being able to turn the projector on which they were never allowed do with the remotes

sk8board

fionny wrote: »

for address within Alexa just about the only address that works is O'Connell Street in dublin annoyingly... hopefully when they officially launch in Ireland they will enable irish address properly. Bing maps just plain sucks donkey bits.

Clear the street address and then clear the postcode. It will let you add most streets or areas within the m50, roughly, from what I was seeing.
I'm based not far north of the airport, so I just chose 'glasnevin' and left it at that for now.
Hope that helps

eddiem74

So I created my own RTE News skill per the instructions provided earlier in the thread and can see and enable the skill in Alexa however it does not show in my flash briefings.

Any ideas?

kennM

Hey guys... anyone on Android .... quick way to get the app.

Install the Aptoide App store, download and install it from there and uninstall Aptoide.

Merry Christmas

sk8board

fionny wrote: »

for iOS its also possible to get the app (i did it the other morning)

1. Open the App Store
2. Scroll to the very bottom and tap your apple ID.
3. Select Sign Out
4. Then tap the same button and select create account.
5. Select the UK... now when the T&C's appear hit cancel (apparently if you proceed at this point it will require a credit card from that country)
6. When you hit cancel you should see the app store change to pounds.
7. Search for Alexa and click get.
8. When it asks you again select create apple id, select uk and proceed though everything
9. Select payment type of NONE.
10. Follow all the rest and verify your account then download.
11. Finally after app is downloaded go back into App Store. Sign out and then sign back into your regular account.... job done.

when I click 'next' after filling out the page for payment type NONE, it stays on that page, but doesn't give any error about which field is the problem (phone, address, post code etc)
I've everything set up and working, so I'm leaving it for a few days and see why they won't release the app in the irish store, but are selling the product here.

Otherwise its going back to them.

mossym

sk8board wrote: »

when I click 'next' after filling out the page for payment type NONE, it stays on that page, but doesn't give any error about which field is the problem (phone, address, post code etc)
I've everything set up and working, so I'm leaving it for a few days and see why they won't release the app in the irish store, but are selling the product here.

Otherwise its going back to them.

?? They're not selling the product here. The reason you need to use parcel motel or wizard is because they're not selling it here

mossym

kennM wrote: »

Hey guys... anyone on Android .... quick way to get the app.

Install the Aptoide App store, download and install it from there and uninstall Aptoide.

Merry Christmas

Even quicker, click on the link already posted earlier today, download to your phone, and install from there

adox

You don't even need the app on your phone! Just use the site posted.

Gerard_Smith

eddiem74 wrote: »

So I created my own RTE News skill per the instructions provided earlier in the thread and can see and enable the skill in Alexa however it does not show in my flash briefings.

Any ideas?

How do you go about doing that? Can't seem to find it.

Bluube

Got an Echo Dot for Xmas, really want to get it set up. Do I need to connect my phone to it? If I went through the website on the laptop will that hinder me in the future when the app comes on iPhone or if I get an Android and want to connect with that.

Silverfluffs

Bluube wrote: »

Got an Echo Dot for Xmas, really want to get it set up. Do I need to connect my phone to it? If I went through the website on the laptop will that hinder me in the future when the app comes on iPhone or if I get an Android and want to connect with that.

It won't hinder you in any way mate. You can use both PC & phone in whatever combination that you want.

Bluube

Ok so I'll have a crack tomorrow and see how it goes. I can still connect the Spotify up to it but just do it through the laptop is it?

Silverfluffs

Bluube wrote: »

Ok so I'll have a crack tomorrow and see how it goes. I can still connect the Spotify up to it but just do it through the laptop is it?

Aye

seamus

sk8board wrote: »

Clear the street address and then clear the postcode. It will let you add most streets or areas within the m50, roughly, from what I was seeing.
I'm based not far north of the airport, so I just chose 'glasnevin' and left it at that for now.
Hope that helps

Kind of worked for me in that I can put my own street address in.
But the weather app gives me Japan instead when I ask for the weather without a place name. I'm presuming this is because the postcode is a "D" number rather than my eircode, so the weather app just uses that and the first hit is some place in Japan.

Liking the dot overall. My wife also likes it, which surprises me. Came in very handy cooking the Xmas dinner being able to shout at it to set timers/reminders

The voice control is more specific than I would have expected. For instance, I have a single nest themostat called "Hallway". I have to tell Alexa to "set Hallway to 20 degrees". "Set Heat to 20 degrees" doesn't work - I get asked whihch thermostat to change. I would expect the technology to recognise that I only have one thermostat registered, therefore that's the one I want to change.
I bet Google Home does it

Otherwise recognition is good; picks anyone up and you don't have to speak slowly, and sometimes not even clearly. Although my daughter couldn't get it to work. She's 4 and was calling Alexa perfectly clearly but it wouldn't pick her up - I wonder if this is intentional on their part to stop kids from using it?

I do feel there is a slight push on these things towards value-add services. I have 50GB of music on my home network, but apparently no way for the echo to stream this for me. I have to pay for some subscription or other instead. I'm not paying spotify €10/month when between FTA radio and my home network I have all the music I want, free.

That said, like the early iPhone, the range of skills is still relatively small and can only increase, so be interesting to see what comes out. As a casual developer myself I'm curious to see what I can get in and build for this.

One of the keys things I think it's missing is to be able to assign non-default skills as default actions. So for instance, I have already been using a shopping list app to sync the shopping list between my wife and me. So I've added this skill to Alexa, but I have to say, "tell <app name> to add carrots to my shopping list".
Whereas I should be able to assign that app as the default shopping list app and Alexa will send the command to that app when I say, "add carrots to shopping list".

Seems like an obvious enhancement, though again it might drive people away from the stuff that people have to pay for, like amazon music.

eddiem74

Gerard_Smith wrote: »

How do you go about doing that? Can't seem to find it.

Its in the other thread in this forum: Amazon Echo FAQ.

Seems you might need to be setup with a US account rather than UK. Still not got it working for flash briefings.

garbeth

Yeah only works for a us account at the moment

Zascar

What's the best Flash Briefing? I use the NPR one but its very US focused.

flangemeistro

Hey guys, I'm one of the thousands who got a dot for Christmas but I said I'd leave the thread die down a small bit before asking anything.

My main problem is with my hue lights in my sitting room. I have a floor lamp in the corner with a colour hue and I have a load of recipes/scenes saved in my hue app but when I ask Alexa to set floor lamp to relax or sunset it says it can't help me.

Also I have a ceiling fitting with two lux bulbs and I can't find a way to link them so I can get both of them to turn on it turn off at the same time, at the moment I have them named sitting room light and other sitting room light but have to give two commands every time to get them to do what I want.

I could be doing something stupid but any help would be appreciated. Thanks

garbeth

Create a group for the ceiling lights in Alexa app. Then say Alexa turn on sitting room lights.

NomadicGray

Zascar wrote: »

What's the best Flash Briefing? I use the NPR one but its very US focused.

I use bbc, and Im pretty sure theres an rte one

flangemeistro

garbeth wrote: »

Create a group for the ceiling lights in Alexa app. Then say Alexa turn on sitting room lights.

Brilliant cheers, that's one problem sorted, if only she would recognise my scenes now.

TheRebelRam

TheRebelRam wrote: »

Ya, on iphone and waiting on support over 30min now. Might try again with my daughters kindle.

Went back to it today and easy enough on iPhone when setting up a new user, all info here
http://www.techbout.com/change-app-store-country-without-credit-card-14058/

TheRebelRam

sk8board wrote: »

when I click 'next' after filling out the page for payment type NONE, it stays on that page, but doesn't give any error about which field is the problem (phone, address, post code etc)
I've everything set up and working, so I'm leaving it for a few days and see why they won't release the app in the irish store, but are selling the product here.

Otherwise its going back to them.

Try this, worked for me
http://www.techbout.com/change-app-store-country-without-credit-card-14058/