Just got an Amazon Echo - now what do I do with it?

“Alexa, play Jeopardy” is sort of fun.

Alexa kinda integrates with harmony hub. But all I can get it to do is shut off tv, turn on tv. I can’t get it to “play netflix” or “pause”.

2 star review on the app confirms it’s not just me.

I could get it to do activities, but not jump to favourites, like it’s supposed to. I’m going to try again when I’ve got my new TV set up, in case it was an issue with the Roku.

My Echo Dot talks to my Harmony hub just fine, and also does the on/off thing easily enough. I can also do “alexa, tell harmony pause” or “alex, tell harmony play” just fine too. But that’s about the extent of it. Something like “start Netflix” would probably require me to have something more inter-op friendly than a Fire TV.

So it’s not greatly useful. 99% of the time, when I want to turn on the TV or pause/resume, I’ve already had to find the remote since I also need to select what to watch. No point in using voice commands at that point.

I have echos in my bedroom, bathroom, and living room now. So when I’m finishing up sleeping, downloading porn on my computer, or pooping, I’ll say “Alexa, turn on the TV” and when I walk to the living room the TV is already on waiting for me. My TV takes a couple seconds to turn on, so this saves at least 3.7 seconds per day. That’s 22 minutes per year!

Now if only Alexa could just listen for the flush, and turn on the TV in response!

Version 2.0, my friend. Or as I like to call it, “number 2”.

Ha ha. We actually moved the Dot out of the bathroom and put it in the covered porch in the back of the house, but my girlfriend’s teenage daughter put it back in the bathroom. She spends a lot of time on her hair so she likes the music.

I do find that the dot’s speaker isn’t loud enough to make listening to music worthwhile while showering, which was, umm, 90% of the reason I put it in the bathroom in the first place. Unfortunately I don’t have any spot with an outlet to put a bluetooth speaker, so it’s basically relegated to playing music when I shave and the aforementioned post-poop TV extravaganza.

How do you know it isn’t? Hmmm?

Eh? There are plenty of battery powered speakers. Hell, I have one hanging inside my shower.

Of course, but I don’t want to worry about recharging it.

Dot users might want to check out the Vaux speaker. https://www.amazon.com/Cordless-Speaker-Portable-Battery-Carbon/dp/B06XH96736

If you’re just using it for showers and shaving, it won’t need recharging often. I got one of these for my birthday in November, and I recharged it for the first time a couple weeks ago.

I have this for in and by the pool

It’s taken a few drops on the concrete too and survived. Biggest down is when it goes under water the water kind of sits there until the sun dries it off a bit and it muffles the sound some. I love that it floats.

How good is the floating of it? I’ll give you a use example. I’d like to use this to stream too while at the lake. Play tunes from my phone (on the boat) while we are in the water, maybe 15-20 feet away. Could we just let this float near us? Is there any integration back via bluetooth from the built in microphone? I’m wondering if I can just instruct Google to play things directly from it.

I have let it float with me for awhile. Now I am in a pool so I wasn’t hugely concerned with it sinking, but it definitely floats. The only issue I’ve experienced is the muffle sound once water gets on top of it. I’ll tell you what I can do though. I have my home pool. I can just drop it on the pool and let it float for a day and see how it does. It’s definitely water proof but I doubt I’ve had it floating more than say an hour. Battery life is still good though after about… oh a year.

Good deal. I would expect we’d have it in the water no longer than say, 3-4 hours. But if not, I could always put it on the boat deck in back. Not in the water there, but might possibly catch a splash or two. The real benefit would be in the water though.

Boats have decent systems for music ON the boat. Rarely they will have expensive tower mounted speakers that project in one direction away from the boat. But either way, it’s hard to get good music time in when you’re in the water. And if it floats, well, that’s a huge bonus.

Holy crap, today Amazon released an update that actually lets me do this! Fire TV and Echo devices can now talk to one another. It’s still pretty limited…doesn’t recognize Kodi, for instance, since it’s not an official Amazon store app…but hey, at least it’s something.

She’s floating in there now. I even turned on my vacuum and threw in a couple of floaties so it gets bumped sometimes. And if you’re boat is anything like my dad’s and some of my neighbors, a good speaker system would just be something else to fix!