Amazon Echo

[coxhaus]

My wife just informed me she ordered an Amazon Echo. Does anybody have one of these?
What do you like about it?
What do you dislike about it?

 

[L&LD]

My wife just informed me she ordered an Amazon Echo.

Cancel the order and trade for new wife!

 

[sfx2000]

Give it a try and see...

My main concern here with the Echo is privacy related, as it's always listening - yeah, I know many smartphones have similar features, but on Android and iOS, it can be easily disabled - the Echo, listening is the main feature and why it exists in the first place..

 

[coxhaus]

It is going to be located in my wife's sewing room so it will not hear much. She wants to use it for music, news, books and grocery lists. I don't know how grocery lists are going to work from the sewing room but we will see.

 

[sfx2000]

Well, give it a try, and if possible, relate your experiences back to the collective hive-mind...

 

[coxhaus]

I will keep the hive updated.

My wife was telling me there is an iPhone app which will connect with the echo for grocery lists. She can be out and about when I add something to the list and her iPhone will update automatically with the revised list no matter where she is located. She can also maintain the list using voice commands. We will see how it works.

 

[thiggins]

I was able to get an Echo when they were by invitation only. I paid for it; I'm not on Amazon's reviewer list.

I used it for awhile, but it's been mostly disconnected because it's useless for one of my key requirements: setting calendar appointments / reminders. Even after all this time, you can set a reminder only within the same day.

Search queries are also pretty disappointing, which I suppose isn't a surprise, since this is Amazon, not Google.

The surprise is that Echo has expanded its ability to control many smart home devices.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201749230.

For what your wife wants, a smartphone in a speaker dock or linked to a Bluetooth speaker would work as well, if not better.

In the end Echo is expensive for what it does. BTW, it does NOT work as a Bluetooth-linked speaker.

Keep in mind a smaller, cheaper version is rumored to be on the way soon.
http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/11/amazon-cheaper-smaller-echo/

 

[System Error Message]

If you can build something yourself and do it much cheaper than it can be a fun experience for some. For example those ARM boards or even a raspberry pi 2 can run many things on a home and use up to 3W (unless you add an external HDD or something that takes lots of power). A raspberry pi 2 can be powered from the usb port of your router. If you are worried about ugliness you can always get a nice case. The reason i suggest this is because many things that the amazon echo does can be done by manually installing and configuring the required software and without having to worry about the prying eyes of google and amazon and a lot of these hardwares have mic and speaker ports. If you have an unused android phone, perhaps its battery may be worn out you can also use that as well as thiggins suggested but in this case you could use it to control other smart home devices too that usually have an app and many android phones support USB host through some adapter.

 

[coxhaus]

My wife loves her Amazon Echo . She uses it almost every day. She uses it for news and music. The sound quality is much better than her iPad. She loves the voice commands with Alexa. While she is sewing or weaving the voice commands control what is going on. You don't have to stop what you are doing. It finds radio stations very easily using just using voice commands.

When my granddaughter comes over she borrows it. She is eight and gets a kick out of being smarter than Alexa. She spends many hours using it.

 

[thiggins]

I've plugged mine back in and am actually occasionally using it since I learned it can set Google calendar events. I still have to go edit the entered events if I need to add details. But for simple reminders it works.

Still can't set an alarm for anything other than the same day, though.... Annoying.

 

[stevech]

I've read about an API for Google's Calendar, so your scripts/code can interact with calendar events, trigger things, etc.