In today’s modern smart home, Amazon’s Echo devices have become a common and useful item – around a quarter of all American households have one, in-fact! Through Alexa, they perform a wide range of functions such as providing news updates, weather alerts, and even recipe ideas. When it comes to the Echo Show, you can … Read more
The goal of most smart home owners is to get their homes to operate seamlessly and achieve interoperability with all of their smart devices. With the introduction of smart home hubs such as Amazon’s Echo, Samsung SmartThings, and Apple HomeKit, just to name a few, this goal of interoperability seemed to become a reality. However, … Read more
The “Communicate” tab on the Alexa app shows various options, including ‘Call’ and ‘Message’. This allows you to contact your Echo devices, but also people in your contact list. So are these calls and messages free, or do they cost money? The communication options within Alexa and Echo (including calls and messaging) are completely free, … Read more
You can use your Echo (and Fire TV) devices as a doorbell for your Ring devices. There are currently 26 different doorbell sounds you can play via Alexa when someone presses your Ring doorbell. Some are standard doorbell sounds, whilst others are seasonal ones: The timestamps for each Alexa doorbell sound are: 0:52 – Default … Read more
When you have dozens (or even hundreds) of smart home devices – from smart speakers to smart bulbs, and smart plugs to cameras – you might be struggling to manage them all. After all, they’re probably all from different brands – meaning that you’ll probably have 10 different mobile apps! And even if the devices … Read more
I love most of the features that Echo provides… apart from the weather forecasting, that is. That’s because I moved house a few years ago, but it still gives me the weather forecast for my old town. Also, Alexa uses AccuWeather which – despite its name – isn’t always the most accurate. As a result, … Read more
I live in a town called Cwmbran, but yet when I ask my Echo device for “the weather today”, I get the weather forecast for Caerphilly – somewhere I haven’t lived in over 3 years. Why?! Equally, the weather forecast I get from Alexa (who use AccuWeather) seems to contradict the one I get from … Read more
I recently came across the ‘Introducing Amazon Echo’ meme on YouTube, and I noticed that none had been created for Firefly – my favourite TV show which was cancelled (too soon…) by Fox. Hence I created I light-hearted Firefly edition for this Amazon Echo meme, using voiceovers mainly from the Firefly TV show, but also … Read more
Whilst I like controlling my Hue smart lights through Alexa, there are some annoying integration issues between the two, which I explore in more detail in my new YouTube video: The timestamps of each issue in the video is: 0:36 – issue 1 – bulb/room naming confusion 3:56 – issue 2 – Alexa think there’s … Read more
I recently started to switch over to smart lighting in my house, and overall I really like the integration with Alexa. After all, being able to control your lights using voice commands to your Echo is much more convenient than pulling out your phone and launching the Hue app. However I have had some integration … Read more