WELL! You learn something new every day. Just had a call from a pal of mine (we both have multiple Amazon Alexa units around the house). Not only can you now call the thing “computer” – but one can now call the other… so “Alexa, call house” rings the house Alexa from my office and makes an Intercom call – love it.
I really do wish they’d offer way more flexibility with keyword naming however. It is pretty much impossible to hold a Skype conversation about the subject without using the word “Alexa” at which point the units on either side of the call start apologising. I can’t imagine “computer” is the best idea either…
Imagine the conversation…. “Yup, I was just upgrading the computer the other day”. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand…”
A key word like abracadabra might be nice – something you don’t use umpteen times a day.
I follow Merlin Mann’s example – whenever talking about how to use Alexa, Google Home, etc I use the phrase “Hey Dingus”, so I don’t keep activating them!
🙂
there’s worst than just “Alexa”, though… a prank very funny in online gaming was to name someone “xbox shut off”, so when someone had this guy in front of him and called him, his xbox would, well, shut off 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTQlHJcrbPU
Indeed very funny 🙂 same with the South Park episode with Alexa.
my keyword would be: Jarvis 🙂
Hi Peter, indeed it’s a nice feature. In this why I am communicating with my family when I travel ( I am always carrying an Alexa with me all the time). I like that I can leave messages also to my friends and they can call me back. In the US you can call also someone directly on his phone from Alexa. Also I can control all my devices (TV, radio, light, AC) back home with Alexa.
Speaking of Alexa, look what I’ve done in the last three days:
-Alexa thermometer
https://myesp8266.blogspot.nl/2017/11/with-help-of-iotcentral.html
-Alexa air quality
https://myesp8266.blogspot.nl/2017/11/getting-air-quality-with-esp8266-and.html
I hope that this week the skill will be online.
Looking now for another challenge, I think I will try an Alexa thermostat, I know that are many, but it’s fun to make your own thermostat.
Another bit of fun when you have friends visiting is to have your Google Home Mini tell Alexa to do something (Alexa turn the desk light on). The nodes googlehome-notify and alexa-local have been great finds!
WELL !!!! I tried alexa-home some time ago and it had some serious issues outside of on and off.
For example if you said.. set heating to 20…. then set heating off – then set heating on – the value bore no resemblance to what you put in previously///
HOWEVER – I just installed it again – and it works a TREAT!!!
I DID note however that Alexa now supports colours – but the Alexa-local node does not yet support that. Would be MARVELLOUS if it did.
I just looked at the Alexa APP for the first time in ages as it was always so slow as to be utterly useless. Now it comes up almost immediately – and there’s a list of all my devices (sadly, also all the ones I’ve scrapped ages ago)…. things are certainly moving along…
I think I had to tell Alexa to “Forget all” and re-“Discover” before the defunct devices disappeared.
Erm, Grant… how do you “forget all” ??
On my Alexa Smart Home/Devices page, it’s next to the Discover button.
I was looking at the APP – not the web page – excellent – that’s all cleaned up nicely.
I do hope Philips are paying a fortune for the constantly annoying ads.. I note when you control a light it says is it is waiting for Royal Philips Electronics – if I could alter that I’d change it to “never buy Philips lights”.
hmm.., I’m using alexa-local v0.3.2. It results in an Alexa device ‘Color Light’. Alexa answer with nothing but ‘okay’. But my lights are only on/off so that may be the difference.
If colours were available you would see it when looking at the complete object output
I see that in the web page is missing the “routine” menu.
Yes, for some reason Routine shows up on the Alexa mobile version but not the PC version.
Yesterday I read this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaxIaPPRXt8. Might be interesting for you.
Can you check your routines. In my Alexa mobile app I can see all my devices but when I am trying to create a routine, I see listed only one. If I unplug that one I see another, so it is possible to be a bug in the application ? I have the latest version of mobile app as far as I know.