Yeah, that’s basically what I was saying. And yes, you shouldn’t have to do it, but here we are.
You did, but I don’t understand how jumping through hoops to get it to work correctly is awesome. There are better solutions to Echos now that don’t require this. That said, the Echos used to be rock solid in this department. I don’t understand how it has gotten worse.
Outside Sonos, I won’t be buying anymore Echo devices.
I do this all the time as I am moving around the house.
I use Echo because that’s where most my content is. If someone doesn’t have that I usually lead them to something like Roku or something, which I also use. I don’t have another smart device set-up in the house… yet. I have one in a box or me to give a try and I might get a smartscreen for the kitchen soon.
Choosing an alternative name for a device or device group really doesn’t feel like jumping through hoops to me. One quick change and the problem is solved. But I agree that it is disappointing to see Alexa struggling a bit more these days with interpreting certain words and phrases. Easily worked around and forgotten, but disappointing. I’m really curious to know why we’re seeing that trend.
Generally I find that assigning simple, easy-for-her-to-understand names is best. I avoid complicating the names. Living room lights are “Living Room 1”, “Living Room 2”, etc. and the group name is “Living Room”. A couple of lights are also assigned to secondary and tertiary group names, for specialized purposes (TV viewing, computer use, reading, etc.). Bedroom lights, same thing. Rinse, repeat. And one big group for all lights, called “Lights”.
How is Master Bedroom a complicated or even an unforeseeable name? I get that Amazon wants to house their workers in some sort of Utopian workplace, but when you create a device, you’d assume the people working on it are familiar with the basic rooms in a house.
It’s not, really, but I’ve just found through trial and error that if it’s possible to simplify and distill a designation even further, then definitely simplify further. “Master Bedroom” is ubiquitous, agreed, but “Bedroom 1” is much harder to misinterpret, from Alexa’s perspective.
I don’t have to change my device names for Siri to work, so I think jumping through hoops is accurate. “Bed reading light” and “floor lamp” are hardly complicated names. I guess if you are really invested in Echo’s you will do what you need to do, but I have other devices that work fine, so I just use those.
Picking an alternative name isn’t really an indicator that one is super invested in the platform, but I get that it feels that way to you.
Yep, it should be handle any name I give it. If it can’t, I have no use for that product. Great if you’re ok with that. I am not.
Ok.
If you are learning the device, instead of the device learning you, something has gone wrong, I gather.
Well that and we’re not really asking for what other devices don’t already do. The other offerings do better in this area which means it’s not impossible, and Amazon can actually learn from that, assuming of course they can learn better than their machine does.
Echo Wall Clock unboxing. Gonna pass on this one. I’m not convinced the visual indicators, when there is more than one timer going, will be as useful as I’d imagined before, as designed, and I don’t really think it would look good in my kitchen.
Which smart-screen do you have there? That’s what that is righ and not a tablet?
Looks like a second-gen echo show.
I’m surprised it has a physical face. I would have thought a digital display would have been more versatile.
The clock needs to run for months on batteries.
Yeah, that’s a Show. And honestly, I really like the timer functionality on it. So much better than on the Clock, IMO. I might actually pick one up down the road, now. (The video isn’t mine, btw, found it on reddit.)
I feel like a smart-screen is in my future, a smart few things, but I haven’t committed. Google supposedly has a really nice one too and Lenovo also gets praise which is basically still Google I think.
Google’s home hub is really slick, the color temperature adjustment makes a huge difference if you use it as a digital photo frame. On one hand I like that it doesn’t have a camera for myself, but if I were buying it for older family members that would be a real negative.
If I was going to get one of these guys for my bedside table, that’s what I would pick up. I strongly prefer Google Assistant to Alexa.