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Amazon Echo Dot

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Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#231

Post by t0mbstone »

ghaff wrote: post #112
PKop wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The single greatest feature of Echo that I use, (and too few others use) is turning on my Phillips Hue lights. You can give each individual light a name, as well as groups of lights their own name. Very convenient to turn on / off lights from anywhere in range of the mic. I use it everyday multiple times a day. If anyone finds network connected lights useful, then they'll find controlling them through Echo doubly use…

Not to pick on you :-), but I have these things called light switches in my house that work pretty well for turning on and off lights. I confess to not seeing much attraction to smart lightbulbs with names. (To be fair, if I had a lot of lights not connected to switches as was the case when I moved into my current house, I'd probably have put in smart lightbulbs rather than doing as much rewiring as I did.)

Light switches are great, but there is something really nice about laying in bed and dimming the lights by voice.

Or right before going to sleep, you remember you left the living room light on, so you say, "Alexa, turn off the living room light", and watch as the glow under the door disappears.

It's a luxury, but it's a lot of fun if you are lazy.

I also use the Echo to adjust my nest thermostat, control my entire home theater (with 6 different devices), and control my tempurpedic adjustable bed and even remote start my car.

I find the possibilities of voice control and home automation to be intoxicating, and hacking around with the Echo is sort of one of my hobbies right now.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#232

Post by mavhc »

Karunamon wrote: post #176
jimktrains2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have 3 separate devices nearby that are Google Now voice activated (the newer devices support this even if the screen is off), and they will sometimes trigger at the same time accidentally. > Since the processing is cloud based, and they know my identity, Interesting, so everything said in that room gets processed and potentially sent to Google for indefinite storage? What a 1984-style luxury.

AFAIK, every one of these devices does nothing until a "wake word" is heard, and only then do they record+send. Having all of the devices listening all the time would be a bandwidth and power nightmare, if not for the sender, for the receiver.

Correct, of course it can activate accidentally.

https://history.google.com/history/audio has a list of all audio recorded

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#233

Post by tdkl »

ryandrake wrote: post #216
caractacus wrote: post #63

When did I turn from the enthusiastic kid who dreamed of audio-controlled personal assistants like this to a cranky old man who doesn't want anything remotely spy-possible in his house?

I love "smart" devices, but hate "devices that needlessly insist on connecting to the Internet". One of the worst offenders is Dropcam. They have a super camera, easy to set up and use. Great picture quality. Would be an awesome baby monitor or "closed circuit TV replacement". But why the goddamn hell does it need to connect to the Internet? Why is the only option available to needlessly stream video out of my home n…

Ease of setup for regular Jane/Joe because they know shit all about router configuration. That's why devices just transfer everything over someone else computer a.k.a. "teh cloud".

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#234

Post by aryamaan »

ghaff wrote: post #105
rrrx3 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "play some good 60s rock" example isn't a VUI breakdown, it's a functionality gap in the backend. One that will probably be fixed pretty quickly, given the way things are headed. A VUI breakdown would be inability to understand accents, or non-responsiveness to commands. As a user input, Alexa is pretty well buttoned up.

You're thinking too much like an engineer :-) It's not a speech recognition breakdown but it's certainly a voice interface breakdown in the sense of I can't get the device to do what I want it to do. As a user, I don't care where in the pipeline my attempts to communicate a desired action break down. I just know that they do.

Same can be said for GUI as well. Remove the search engine concept, you are only left with playlist, song/artist name on such sites.

We don't have audio search engine equivalent yet but that day is also not far.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#235

Post by eclipxe »

rpgmaker wrote: post #128
ausjke wrote: post #49

My FireTV is also upgraded to Alexa silently recently and it's fun to play with. Is it possible for me to upload my own content, say an audio book, some music I own etc so I can use Alexa as a voice command to fetch my own data too? be it on the cloud or my local NAS/DLNA box.

My dream is to have some kind of android TV box that performs this.

FireTV

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#236

Post by underbluewaters »

xd1936 wrote: post #13

My problem with Alexa is, I don't want to invest in a new ecosystem. I'm fine with Amazon being the hub that connects all of my services, but I don't want to use Amazon To-Do List, Amazon Prime Radio, Amazon Traffic, Amazon Sports, Amazon Calendar, Amazon Weather. That being said, they announce partnerships with more and more services every month. Things are looking up.

Yep. I'm already invested in Apple products, for better or worse. If Apple comes out with something like this for Siri I'll snatch it up. I actually kind of resent the fact that my shopping experience with Amazon has gotten worse in the past couple years while they push their original series, streaming services, and devices (many of which suck).

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#237

Post by Karunamon »

jethro_tell wrote: post #210
fredley wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: is it feasible to implement a kind of loose voice 'fingerprint' to prevent this kind of thing? Will/could Alexa know who's talking to it?

I really want an 'Alexa, stop listenting' command. There's a button on the top that mutes the mic and puts a red ring around them, but when I have people over, it's not a great environment to use voice commands anyways. 'Everyone be quite so I can shout across the room to change my music'

A workaround would be to mute the device itself, and then use the remote (which has its own mic, and works well in noisy environments since you just hold it closer to your mouth).

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#238

Post by ape4 »

binarymax wrote: post #115

Be forewarned - if I am invited into your home for any reason, and I see an Alexa device, I will vocally add a large shopping list of nonsense to your Amazon cart :)

Alexa, how do I do activity. Oh and please order a mile of bubble wrap.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#239

Post by fluxquanta »

tenpies wrote: post #171
fluxquanta wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While indeed creepy, I ordered the original Echo as soon as it was made available, but I'm probably a special case. I live by myself and barely even speak out loud at home. If Amazon can somehow monetize my primary use of Echo as a glorified kitchen timer I will be impressed.

> I live by myself and barely even speak out loud at home. It occurs to me that the background noise in your home actually reveals a whole lot about the self: - What you're listening to and when - What you're watching and when - What type of gentleman's material you enjoy and when - When you leave home and get home - When you wake up, when you go to bed Some of these can be limited by the size of your house, but the…

Your first three points are moot in my case because, as a testament to your mentioned small apartment size, I consume all my entertainment with headphones after some real passive aggressive comments from neighbors a few years back.

When I wake, sleep, leave, and come home could be monitored by Echo, but it's also already being monitored by other devices I own, and it's data I'm not particularly concerned about at the moment.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#240

Post by fluxquanta »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #175
pc86 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$99 for a kitchen timer seems a bit steep.

Considering most smartphones already have this app on them - I'm going to agree. FREE vs. $99? No contest there my friend

We all spend our money how we want, and cell phones most certainly aren't free, either.

Aside from that, I didn't purchase the Echo with the intent of it being primarily kitchen timer. It just so happens that after owning it for over a year my usage of it is mostly limited to that.

My usage is probably around 85% timers and alarms, 10% streaming music, 4% shopping lists, and 1% everything else.

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