Amazon Alexa and Echo FAQ

Loafing Oaf

paulbok wrote: »

Alexa's voice changing on Friday?
Anyone else seen the advert?

My guess there will be selectable voice options with more that can be bought, similar to the sat navs 10 years ago.
If so, Paul Bethany's voice has to be there.

Is this available? I'd like a bit of variety in Alexa's voice.

paulbok

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

Is this available? I'd like a bit of variety in Alexa's voice.

Still early in America, could be evening here before whatever it is rolls out. Probably will need a system update as well

Edit: my bad, the date for this is 04/02, so Sunday. Probably that night to coincide with the Superbowl. An updated add available now with celebrities trying out to be the new voice.

scamalert

hate that country copyright crap.

heres link i found, dunno doesnt seem to reveal much about voice besides making it like advertisement.So not sure what to expect in this instance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw_HnmXD05I

Doodah7

Question: I have for the last 14 months or so been using a Revolut Card to to pay for Amazon Music on my Dot. Revolut recently issued me with a new card and apparently it is now coming up as an Irish-issued card rather than a UK one and the payment is being declined.

I thought I read recently that Amazon Music is now available in Ireland. Is this the case? I would really miss having music on the Dot tbh.

Mr.Crinklewood

My recent update tells me that Alexa can send Text messages.

Will give it a test when I'm back in the house.

patmullarkey

Has anyone any ideas on the Eko Tap? Has anyone tried it in Ireland. Or why is it not available in the UK? I have seen instances of the latest one (no tap-voice activated) recently or sale on Done Deal. I'd suspect there could be set-up issues!

BionicRasher

patmullarkey wrote: »

Has anyone any ideas on the Eko Tap? Has anyone tried it in Ireland. Or why is it not available in the UK? I have seen instances of the latest one (no tap-voice activated) recently or sale on Done Deal. I'd suspect there could be set-up issues!

I had a Tap but sold it last week.
It's a great bit of kit. No set up issues at all. Only issue is that it came with a US plug but that's easily resolved as I had loads of regular power blocks in the house and it just uses a usb connection.
Good sound, battery life was decent, the charger base station/disk is brilliant. Portability is great.

The fact that it can be set to be completely hands free was great.

The reason I sold it was that I found Alexa a bit dumb. Bing as a search engine is poor. It was starting to get a bit better for Ireland in the last few weeks with an official Ireland release and app etc but still not great.
Also we are heavily invested in Google with Chromecast, Gmail, calendar, maps etc and it's just way way smarter than Alexa.
So we sold up and have purchased a few Google homes and we are happy out .... except for the fact that we no longer have a portable smart speaker.

In conclusion I would recommend the Tap if you are ok with Alexa services

scamalert

that's my issue with alexa most skills are region bound, which is utter crap you go to skills section and theres f all really to choose from, i mean if US/Canada have more advanced features why no have open store for all skills.

I have app on my tablet which is another drawback since as someone mentioned sms functionality i guess ill need to update it on one of my phones,since to get alexa drop in i needed phone setup, and it shouldn't be really any issue to implement smth like viber to make calls in general over voip, so whoever comes up with cheaper alternatives might easily take out amazon in the long run.

i finished with amazon music trial and while its not expensive but without it i dont find much use for alexa, just to control lights or get news on weather.

the new alexa devices seem just more to milk the market as looked up tap and its like over 200e for basically dot and wireless speaker, when one could setup dot and get proper sound bar, well i guess to each its own, but do hate limitations and every service costing extra when i can have my youtube playlist running at no cost.

id say people who look into the alexa and google should do research as amazon has looks but AI is pretty weak and many seem to switch over now to google.

patmullarkey

Thank you very much BionicRasher. That's great news (for me).

Mr.Crinklewood

Ask her if she is losing her voice, then ask her to whisper.

I have an echo and a dot and at the weekend I set-up multiroom. It was great when I wanted to be walking between rooms but now everytime I ask either the echo or dot to play a radio station etc it plays it on the "everywhere group" when I really only want it on the individual device.

I know if I say "play newstalk on nox's echo" or "play newstalk nox's echo dot" it will play on the individual device but its a bit of a pain having to add the extra words and increaces the chacnes of alexa miss hearing especially when dealing with Irish radio sations or song names on spotify.

My question is there an easy way to exit from the multi-room by voice, I tired things like "exit the everywhere group" or "exit multi-room" but it didn't work?

Loafing Oaf

paulbok wrote: »

Still early in America, could be evening here before whatever it is rolls out. Probably will need a system update as well

Edit: my bad, the date for this is 04/02, so Sunday. Probably that night to coincide with the Superbowl. An updated add available now with celebrities trying out to be the new voice.

The 'language' options seem the same as before for me. Maybe this new voice(s?) is only available in America

paulbok

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

The 'language' options seem the same as before for me. Maybe this new voice(s?) is only available in America

No news on this since from Amazon, even after the Superbowl

frash

Is anyone using Alexa for calls?

I tried it last night for the first time & it says I can only call numbers in US, Canada & Mexico

Presume this is some US/UK Amazon a/c thing or does it work in Ireland at all?

cletus

Quick question for the experts here. I have Philips hue lights in my sitting room and upstairs landing. I've set a routine so that when I say goodnight to Alexa she turns off the sitting room light, and puts the landing on to 50% (two small boys asleep upstairs with door opened, so don't want to wake them. Only have one echo dot, so we turn the light off at the switch once upstairs.
In the morning the landing light is turned back on at the switch, but when I get downstairs, the sitting room light is also on at 30% (which is what it would have been at the night before)

So the question (eventually) is, does turning the upstairs light back on by the switch somehow trigger Alexa to also turn on the sitting room light

tweek84

cletus wrote: »

Quick question for the experts here. I have Philips hue lights in my sitting room and upstairs landing. I've set a routine so that when I say goodnight to Alexa she turns off the sitting room light, and puts the landing on to 50% (two small boys asleep upstairs with door opened, so don't want to wake them. Only have one echo dot, so we turn the light off at the switch once upstairs.
In the morning the landing light is turned back on at the switch, but when I get downstairs, the sitting room light is also on at 30% (which is what it would have been at the night before)

So the question (eventually) is, does turning the upstairs light back on by the switch somehow trigger Alexa to also turn on the sitting room light

This sounds like "does the light in the fridge really go off when i close the door"
Do you know if turning off the light switch upstairs does that turn on the light downstairs?

Sebastian Dangerfield

We changed our broadband yesterday, so I had to set up the new wifi through the app on my phone. Since then, no sounds comes from my Echo Dot. It lights like it is responding to what I asked it, but silence. When I tried to play spotify through my phone via the dot, the same thing - it looks like its working, but theres no sound.

Could the broadband change have done something to the hardware, or is this just complete coincidence? If anyone has seen this before, I'd appreciate any advice.

Nelbert

Sebastian Dangerfield wrote: »

We changed our broadband yesterday, so I had to set up the new wifi through the app on my phone. Since then, no sounds comes from my Echo Dot. It lights like it is responding to what I asked it, but silence. When I tried to play spotify through my phone via the dot, the same thing - it looks like its working, but theres no sound.

Could the broadband change have done something to the hardware, or is this just complete coincidence? If anyone has seen this before, I'd appreciate any advice.

Don’t mean to be insulting.... have you tried highering the volume either by voice or button push? Only ask as the Mrs has a frustrating habit of walking over and holding finger on volume down till you can’t hear it rather than just “Alexa stop” which means the next time someone asks or plays something it’s too low to hear.

Sebastian Dangerfield

Nelbert wrote: »

Don’t mean to be insulting.... have you tried highering the volume either by voice or button push? Only ask as the Mrs has a frustrating habit of walking over and holding finger on volume down till you can’t hear it rather than just “Alexa stop” which means the next time someone asks or plays something it’s too low to hear.

First thing I tried!

scamalert

Sebastian Dangerfield wrote: »

First thing I tried!

i would try hard reset on dot and then add to your new network for it to sync with new outside IP address.

tweek84

Nelbert wrote: »

Don’t mean to be insulting.... have you tried highering the volume either by voice or button push? Only ask as the Mrs has a frustrating habit of walking over and holding finger on volume down till you can’t hear it rather than just “Alexa stop” which means the next time someone asks or plays something it’s too low to hear.

Haha you have one of them aswell.....mine waits until i have left the room and decides to push the buttons

cletus

tweek84 wrote: »

This sounds like "does the light in the fridge really go off when i close the door"
Do you know if turning off the light switch upstairs does that turn on the light downstairs?

Right, so I tried to get the sitting room light to come on by manually switching the landing light, no luck. Asked the wife if she's turning it on (she's up before me), she says no.

Got up this morning, sitting room light was on. Has anybody any ideas at all

davo2001

cletus wrote: »

Right, so I tried to get the sitting room light to come on by manually switching the landing light, no luck. Asked the wife if she's turning it on (she's up before me), she says no.

Got up this morning, sitting room light was on. Has anybody any ideas at all

Do you have any IFTTT receipes setup by any chance?

Sebastian Dangerfield

scamalert wrote: »

i would try hard reset on dot and then add to your new network for it to sync with new outside IP address.

This did the trick - thanks a lot

cletus

davo2001 wrote: »

Do you have any IFTTT receipes setup by any chance?

I've a couple, but the only one that's connected to hue is "Alexa trigger self destruct".

I've turned this off, we'll see in the morning I guess.

cletus

cletus wrote: »

I've a couple, but the only one that's connected to hue is "Alexa trigger self destruct".

I've turned this off, we'll see in the morning I guess.

Right, its not that so

whiz

Hi Guys, is there any good food receipes skill that you can download ?

Any response appreciated

Lord TSC

Hey guys. Got an Alexa at XMas, loved it, so we've got two more now.

Is there a way to use the two as an intercom or to send voice messages from one to the other? I can't find anything yet thats out here that lets you do it. We've one upstairs and two downstairs and it would be great if we could use them to communicate.

So far, we've managed to get Spotify able to play on one device via commands from another, meaning we've been trying to use song titles to communicate :P

scamalert

OSI wrote: »

You're looking for "Drop In". Think it has to be enabled via the app, although I don't think it's available in most regions.

works fine here in Ireland.

only thing is you need to install alexa app on one of the phones ios/android then you get this person icon if remember correctly then you just enable intercom/drop in, thou limited mine only to be used in house devices only, since think it allows to drop in on other contacts who have alexa as well but didnt try that one,nor would like someone trying to drop in :].

once thats done go into your alexa devices and name them properly like bedroom etc or just names to make life easier, once all that done and you know names you just say alexa drop in on x and its turns green and other person has to answer, similar sound to alarm.also theres some similar way to setup leaving recorded messages ,since when initially tried it got dot ring blinking green and took a while to ti figure why it was doing that until found that needed to say alexa read my messages and there was short record left prob from trying drop in function from the beginning.

its handy function to speak to someone upstairs without shouting :]

Lord TSC

Got it working.

The option wasn't working on my iPad (wasn't even showing up) but the second I connected to the app via my iphone, it was there. Awesome

There's no charges for the calls and such in house, right? It says you can connect with other people's Alexas outside the house too, can you? I presume then it charges for the phone call?