Living with Alexa, A month with my echo dot.

January 11th 2017

Echo Dot 

I've had my echo dot just over a month and I have to say I'm impressed. Its not quiet Star Trek but its getting close. My echo dot can control my lighting and heating sadly not my hot water yet but there has to be an update soon. Its so simple after set up just ask"Alexa set heating to 22 Degrees" and its done the boiler clicks on. Ask Alexa  to turn on the lights and its the same thing although for lighting its better to set up groups with specific names. For example in my front room I have three different lights, Two banks of three spot lights and a reading lamp. So they all sit in different groups 

1, Front lights 

2, Back lights 

3 Reading Lamp

That way its easier for Alexa to determine what you are talking about. 

When it came to setting up hive the Alexa application connected to my hive straight away but defaulted to the name receiver, So I moved it into a group called heating and from then on plane sailing. Hot water still has to be done via my phone or thermostat as it automatically slaves to heating but thats fine. 

Amazon Music is great you can ask Alexa to play most popular music and she'll either play the track if its on prime and you have a prime account or you could get an amazon unlimited music account and play almost anything in my experience. 

Audible is great I've connected a bluetooth speaker to my second echo dot and I've been listening to 'A time to kill'  in the bath and I've only fallen asleep once. 

Sometimes Alexa does just want attention also know as going on the fritz. She will pick up something from your TV or other source of audio and try to make a request out of it, so don't be alarmed if sometimes she pops up and says "sorry I didn't get that" it will happen from time to time. She doesn't pick up on the Amazon advert so much any more which is nice. 

I haven't ordered anything from Amazon using Alexa but I have checked the prices of some things which is good and saves me opening the phone or laptop. 

Even after a month I'm still impressed and its integrated its self in to my home well.