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

I’m in a boat club, so even more variance, as I’ve checked out a number of boats on days when I book them. But I have a ton of boating friends. There is never any point after you put a brand new boat in the water that every single thing on the boat works correctly. The old saying was, “boats are a hole in the water you throw money into.” The new saying for whenever you do have something broken is, “BOAT = Bust Out Another Thousand,” because shit gets expensive, quickly.

On shared boats, the stereos and/or speakers are the most abused item on them. Thus me wanting to take my own speaker. :(

I bought a Logitech UE Mobile Boombox a couple of years ago, with a solid impact resistant rubber casing. I perch it in the top corner of my shower. It’s plenty loud and I probably plug it in overnight once every couple of weeks. As Ginger_Yellow wrote, mostly used for shower/shave in the mornings. I may not have to charge it even that often, it’s pretty low maintenance.

That said I do share your inclination/preference to put a solution in place and never have to think about it again.

Im sure you could easily rig up a floatation device for the boombox that would keep it totally out of the water. Since this speaker is cool with getting wet, it can get splashed all day long and as long as it doesn’t get submerged it should work great.

Well I am not an audiophile but I think it plays pretty well although it drops some when water is on top of it…, like when the bass hits you can see the water bounce around. I’ve never pulled it out and had it not be more than full enough to use… the only downside, aside form the price is that mic isn’t great, but they’re lucky I’m answer at all. I just took a quick dip and had to fish it out the skimmer basket. He’s still floating though!

7 hours later, twice fished out of the skimmer, one caught under the float mattress in what ios now 112 degree weather and that’s after I dropped it on concrete a few months ago… tough little speaker. I’d get a brighter color though to make it easier to find should it float away.

Oh and this is the same speaker I use for one of my dots. Lots of fun playing amazon prime outside.

Great tip, thank you. Also, how does it connect to the dot? I have a full size echo, does the dot have bluetooth or does it need to be manually connected with a cable?

You would normally connect to the dot via bluetooth, but it has a port too. The biggest downside I’ve found so far with the dot is it’s slower than echo, the speaker of course is subpar, but mostly the portable speakers outside the TV/receiver kind of set-up typically turn themselves off when you use them.

I’m use to just walking by my Echo and issuing a command. The dot still does that because it’s plugged in but my little sound boxes just shut down if they’re not in use. boo.

What do you mean, slower? It’s just a microphone, a speaker, and an internet connection. I don’t see why performance would be any different.

I don’t see any reason why it should be either. I’ve returned two and settled for the third. It cycles, like the blue light turns two or three times before I get a response. This machine actually has a stronger signal and is closer to the router than the big machine.

I don’t care what the specs. This is the third machine from them, and it’s obvious there is notable response difference. You’d think it’s the mic not picking up, but it does respond indicating it is getting the voice command… plus I can see it on the app. I’m not a big fan of the dot.

Just tested mine a couple times and the blue circle pulses only once before answering my question. Maybe you’re haunted.

Mine works ok too. Often it perks up and says stuff when we haven’t talked to it.

Haha, sure. 3 times haunted. A miracle of statistics. I don’t know. I’ve been using Alexa since she came out to the Prime public. I feel I’ve got her pulse, and it’s off in the hockey puck version.

FWIW I’ve read numerous accounts on reddit about the Dot having a slightly inferior mic design that results in decreased responsiveness in some situations. I haven’t picked one up yet, so I can’t say either way.

yeah i haven’t figured out what to do with my echo dot either since my amazon account is in canada.

in order to get the weather i have to be more verbose than i’d like since it defaults to seattle without support for canadian zip codes.

Yeah, if you can’t use the region you’re actually living in, you’re going to have to live with not full functionality for a while. I think Canada is coming “soon” but I don’t know the schedule. You presumably still have smart home and music access, right?

The Box of Cats skill is great for freaking out your cats.

“Alexa, open box of cats.”

Not going to do it anymore, though, because Loki seemed really concerned about the kitten that was apparently trapped in either the Echo or the sink drain next to it.

Weak wifi in the location? Or mildly defective antenna? Problem connecting to wifi may explain it.

You can always turn it into a spy device and then give it to someone you want to know everything they say. I bet we even have some top government officials who would fall for it…

Nope. As described above. Stronger signal than the large echo. It could very well be the mic problem if they weakened that with the dots. I thought it was mostly the speaker but she is noticeably worse than I big one.

Just recalled another factor that you might want to consider. Don’t know if this applies to the Dot, but both my Echos have a tendency to get sluggish after a couple of weeks uptime and need to be rebooted. They’re able to respond, but it often requires several very loud repetitions before they do anything, and sometimes they do nothing (no red ring, no indication of any kind that they heard me). Sometimes, their responsiveness is fine but they are incapable of raising the volume above 2 no matter what I say or how loudly/clearly. Power cycling always fixes this. I suspect some sort of weird caching issue or something.