Alexa has a positive confirmation before sending a message. It sounds like she thought she got one from them. Again though, how is this going to get better. I don’t want it to be directly. I tell Alexa do things all the time without facing her. People in a crowd can talk to her… like what could they do? I rarely trigger Alexa accidentally. Siri, all the time.
Which is a problem.
I wonder if anyone has told this couple that the complete audio recordings and transcripts of what was said to Alexa are in the Alexa app on your phone. (unless maybe that feature can be turned off?) This would have answered all their questions about what happened.
I think Amazon has already pushed out an update because my Echo is now making an electronic noise whenever I say Alexa. I’m not sure if it will help because you’ll barely hear it at a distance.
Never mind. I have a Fire Tablet and it now has Alexa. That was what was making the noise.
You can modify the behavior of the “drop in” command (which is what I understand was the root issue). Drop in lets you talk to another Echo. You can set it to only talk to ones in your household, or you can turn that feature off entirely. The default setting seems to be to allow you to drop in on anyone in your contact list.
I’m sure you can turn the calling feature off entirely too, which would also prevent any issues like this happening.
Definitely not. I had to enable drop in on each specific Echo device in my household. The default is Drop In disabled.
Explain to me why i need to ask the Cloud what time it is again? Voice control really is the first Old Man territory for me.
No, just stuff after it wakes up.
However, I’d recommend that folks turn on the sound when Alexa wakes, so you know when it is listening.
I use voice control to turn off all the lights on my house when i go to bed.
Weird, when I went to change it, it was enabled for people on my contact list. I don’t recall having distinctions between contact list/only local before, so maybe I enabled drop in and then they expanded it and I was automatically put in the broadest category?
This link seems to explain the defaults fairly well. I guess I was wrong in that Drop In is enabled by default (which is weird, since I remember having to turn it on), but that it’s set to allow no one to Drop In until you specifically add users who can.
Only costs $100 to buy new lightbulbs to do so!
I also use it to shut off the TV. That one is actually useful because it’s a pain to find where people left the remote (harmony control). None of the other skills work properly thought (switch channels, etc etc).
It’s a decent shower radio. In theory it’s good to check the weather but it’s kinda slow.
We use a Google Home and an Alexa in the house to:
- Control the TV (change inputs, volume up/down, turn off/on).
- Set kitchen timers.
- Play podcasts while showering.
- Ask about traffic if we’re a little early or late leaving the house.
All of which are nice to be able to do as we’re moving around or have our hands full.
We haven’t really found a good use for things like lights or smart outlets yet. My understanding is that smart outlets don’t really work for things that have electronic on/off switches or automatic shutoffs, but are useful for things like lamps.
It’s nice enough for the bedroom to check time and weather before getting out of bed. We use it for that and to play music. Every once in awhile we ask it some other kind of question and we might get an answer 30% of the time. Either Alexa can’t understand the question or she misinterprets it most of the time. Oh, and it makes a nice oven timer too.
I’m sure we could do more with it if we dug in and studied just what it can do. I am not motivated to do so.
Oh, it’s a good exercise timer too! I have to do sets of stuff of 3 minutes each.
I want a George Jetson setup someone wake me up when that works. Coffee me. Shower me. Moisturize me.
Neither case worked for me. I tried both the outlet and the smart bulb methods, in both cases they kept losing connection so I had to manually unplug/replug them to reset. Which defeats the “smart” part.
I use them to play music while showering and shaving, turn on/off my various TVs (Harmony integration), and turn on/off the lights. I also ask the time so I don’t have to open my eyes while sleeping, and ask for the weather every morning.
Actually I use a google home mini for bathroom music, as its speaker is much, much better than the echo dot.
Well I am not sure how i am supposed to get my Stark Trek like phone calls, and Aliens, if I can’t reach out to other devices!
Time. Weather. Order things. Messages, like voice mail. Games. Stories. Music. Reminders, Timers. Lights on and Off, Wikipedia faacts… it does a lot of stuff.
Alexa, sing a song about paper airplanes.
That’s what i mean i just… feel old. Because i just don’t want to do that stuff over voice when i’m like literally surrounded by tablets, phones and laptops.