Littleted

Well after many years with Siri and the lack of ideas for Xmas for kids i bought a flurry of new Echos Plus/Echo Dots and an Echo spot, i have to say im loving it, hooked it into Hive heating/Bose Bedside clock/LG OLEDs and Sony Soundbars and its been great, i can be even lazier now. I feel out of the main contenders Alexa seems to be the most used, with the systems crashing at Xmas with the amount of people getting them, BMW have just introduced it into their cars, and my Sony Atmos soundbars have all had firmware updates and now have it built in...

I am a big amazon user though with prime etc, kinda buy everything from them, so it does pay to have prime and stuff as its pretty much amazons baby, although she does play spotify if i say stream from spotify rather than amazon music.
One in Kitchen is cool use it for timers and radio, so easy to do

Any of you use them ? or google play etc.

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

Yep, I'm well invested in Alexa stuff now.

Have an Echo in the kitchen (which weirdly stopped working at all this morning) and in the lounge a LOT of sonos gear which is incredible.

Love it!

I also use Spotify over Amazon music even though I have Amazon prime too.

Littleted

Ive got 3 months free of amazon Music from some deal last year, but as you do i think i,ll stick with Spotify, its only an extra word to say LOL....

Not tried sonus yet as most my rooms have high end soundbars in with spotify connect. Might give them a whirl

My only negative about alexa is, amazon should have added battries in the units, would be nice to carry it into bathroom for bathtime, rather than me having to breakout the bose revolve...

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

Why don't you look at fitting a smart speaker into the bathroom ceiling? Was looking at them this week as my lounge has a massive collection of ceiling speakers that I'm not using at the moment.

SmurfyBhoy

I had a hilarious night in my friends watching his 2 year old lose the rag because Alexa couldn't understand him,

These gadgets can be entertaining in more ways than you think

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

haha. Yep I know what you mean Smurf.

Both my 2 kids (3 and 5 years old) shout instructions at Alexa now. They constantly get her to play their favourite Disney music. I've got seriously expensive hifi equipment that mostly plays the bl00dy Frozen album over and over again.

Littleted

U got a Link B to some i can look at, didn't think about that, any of them do spotify connect yet ?

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

Yep, in the kitchen I've got an Amazon Echo but my lounge if now packed with Sonos kit.

I have the Sonos beam connected to the TV: https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/shop/beam.html

Sonos Sub: https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/shop/sub.html

and now also the Sonos connect Amp powering some very large separate speakers: https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/shop/connectamp.html

They are all synchronised perfectly together and the spread of sound is just excellent. They replaced a very high end Cambridge Audio amplifier and I couldn't be happier to be honest. All Alexa compatible so I can tell her to switch to the TV, play whatever music I want, radio etc. All works a treat.

urban

iTrader: (1)

Echo show in the living room, echo dot in the bedroom, and another in the bathroom.
Its inside a bathroom cabinet, and i have a USB/shaver adapter to plug it into the shaver socket in the cabinet.
I've had alexa for several years now, it was original first purchased to operate two TP link smart plugs for awkward to reach Christmas tree lights.
Now it can control my bathroom underfloor heating, 4 TP link smart plug, a ring video doorbell, and a ring floodlight camera.
Music in the bathroom in the mornings is quite nice I much say.

Littleted

Good idea i,ll look 1 up

hux309

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

urban

iTrader: (1)

Got a couple of TP link smart bulbs too, you get an app to control them as well as alexa, which is handy for the porch say when coming home at night.

This is the usb shaver adapter I bought.

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

Ironically, my Amazon Echo is no longer working. It's dead and won't reconfigure no matter how hard I try and no matter what I try. Typical.

urban

iTrader: (1)

Presume you've tried the factory reset procedure.

Do any of the buttons do anything at all?

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

Yep, over and over again. Seems to look like it resets fine, even connects to my phone for setup fine after that but then just keeps going round and round saying make sure the orange light is going when it actually is and never passing that step to allow it to get set up again. Removed it from our system, even turned off all wireless in our house to try, used alternative mobiles etc and nothing. Very annoying.

urban

iTrader: (1)

How old is it?
If its < 2years, contact the melters on amazon live chat, tell them its faulty, assuming you bought it from them originally.
I've returned one of those magic garden hoses at just over a year old after it burst, now maybe its because I order pretty much everything from amazon, but they've never questioned anything I've needed to return

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

Yeh it's 6 months old at most. Bought it from John Lewis at the time for some reason. I'm going to have one last go to set it up via a laptop tonight as I've read it can also be done this way. Who knows. It's really weird, it just went offline for no reason and stopped working only telling me "Sorry, I can't process that request at this time" with a red bar. Yet my home wireless is just fine and when I go through the setup process it wirelessly connects to my phone just fine, just doesn't get any further that that step. It's almost like it's done a software update over night and has corrupted firmware. Very odd.

urban

iTrader: (1)

The echo dot i have in the bathroom did the very same thing, working the night before, but had a different message, it said i'm having trouble understanding or something like that, but the factory reset worked no bother.
Try to deregister yours first, then try the factory reset

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

Yep, done all that. De-registered it etc before resetting it. Tried over and over again with no luck.

Mine says it's having trouble understanding in an American accent when it loses internet connection. When everything returns it works just fine. This is quite different to the normal drop outs though and turned red with a totally different message. Once I'd reset the unit I just can't get it to set up again. Something isn't right.

LostUser

I'm pretty sure if you set the default music player in the alexa app to be Spotify you don't need to say Play xx from spotify. I just say "Play xx" and it plays from Spotify. Alexa even says "Playing xx from Spotify"

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

Yes, that's what I've done. I have both Spotify and Amazon music on Alexa and have set Spotify as the default service so just need to tell it to play whatever without mentioning Spotify at all.

Littleted

Great thanks guys didn't know

I connected my Bose revolve to the DOT last night, sounds great just like the plus now..

CharlySkunkWeed

iTrader: (7)

Heard on the radio today that you can "listen in" remotely? The DJ and his sidekick were listening in to their partners chatting to eachother at home. Is that true ?
They didn't tell us how it's done obviously, someone phoned in the details.

Pross

iTrader: (3)

I think you can listen to what it has recorded via the companion app .. probably what they were doing, afaik there is no way to stream live audio.

CharlySkunkWeed

iTrader: (7)

This was just random conversation (not recorded) but it was on radio so may just be for entertainment purposes

Pross

iTrader: (3)

Oh found it now, its called "drop in" looks like a pita to setup and is off by default.

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

Yes, the drop in facility is setup and turned on when you first install it so I immediately turn this feature off.

BrownPantsRacing

iTrader: (6)

Managed to get mine working again last night after another few hours of trying. So I changed my mobile phone at the end of last year and still had the one I originally set it up with, so I tried that and same problem. Connected with my phone and made a connection but the setup process went no further than that. Failed in exactly the same way. So setup on this Echo fails with every single android device we own which work with all the other bots too. It's very strange.

I'd read up online yesterday that you can also set the units up using a laptop and the online alexa.amazon.com site which is what I tried next. Low and behold it worked! Laptop connected the same way all our phones do to the Echo and this time the progress bar showed itself and it went to the next stage and allowed me to select a wireless network to join, selected and setup just fine from then onwards. All seemed fine and it worked until I unplugged it and moved it back into the kitchen where it then stopped working again. It's exactly the same distance from the wireless aerial as it was during setup but came up with the red bar again and just wouldn't find a network.

I suspect there is a hardware fault with some of the memory chips inside the unit and where it's storing the wireless network it loses the info during setup or power down. Something certainly isn't right.

To confuse me even more, I gave up on it when the red connection light reappeared and without touching the unit later that even it started working again and has been fine since then.

Grrr. Technology.

urban

iTrader: (1)

Good result though