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OldSenileGuy
Mar 13, 2001
I set up an "everything" group as soon as the feature was released like 3(?) years ago. It's supposed to group all my Alexas into one so I can play Spotify throughout my apartment. It actually works about....20% of the time. And that might be generous.

Is this just a known thing with the grouping of Alexas? That it's kinda poo poo and doesn't work? Would deleting the group and creating a new one help things? Like maybe because the protocol has gotten better over time?

Or is it because my Alexas are so old? I have one first gen Echo, two first gen Echo Dots, and one second-gen Echo Dot.

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The Midniter
Jul 9, 2001

My wife is getting into smart lighting and has recently installed Cync light bulbs in our dining room chandelier and floodlights in the recessed kitchen lighting.

The normal bulbs in the dining room work perfectly through Alexa, but the flood lights don't respond at all. All six of them are recognized in the Alexa app, work just fine in the Cync app, are connected to wifi (which I painfully did last night, factory resetting each one and re-adding), but they don't respond to Alexa commands at all via either the app or the latest-gen Echo I have in our kitchen.

Sometimes when I try to flip the lights off in the app, it will give a "server unresponsive" message - other times, the icon to turn an individual bulb on/off simply disappears until I hard close the app and reopen.

Any ideas what I can do to get these to respond?

Deviant
Sep 26, 2003

i've forgotten all of your names.


nine16thsdago posted:

have you found a more palatable system, or are you moving away from voice assistants altogether?

i have some googles in box i havent gotten around to setting up to see if they annoy me less.

echo is still decommed, i presume it still 'by the way!'s constantly?

edit: i just noticed i havent looked in this thread in a while lmao

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

I haven’t had a “by the way” in I-don’t-know-how long, but I’m in Canada which might affect things.

nelson
Apr 12, 2009
College Slice
My most recent “By the way” was “there is a flood watch in your area until 7pm” when I asked what the weather was. Useful information but the “by the way” in front of it made it seem like an afterthought.

nelson fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Aug 13, 2022

Deviant
Sep 26, 2003

i've forgotten all of your names.


all i know is it kept offering to set up subscriptions or tell me routines or other asinine features i didn't want to use.

i do not want by the way. i want you to be an alarm clock i can yell at.

Maneki Neko
Oct 27, 2000

Anyone with a second gen echo show 10 able to use widgets? I see the option to pick widgets, but they don't actually display. OS is 5.5.5.2, which it claims is the latest.

nine16thsdago
Jun 29, 2005
fprintf(stderr, "this should never print\n");

Deviant posted:

i have some googles in box i havent gotten around to setting up to see if they annoy me less.

echo is still decommed, i presume it still 'by the way!'s constantly?

edit: i just noticed i havent looked in this thread in a while lmao

no, i wouldn't say it's constantly. they may have reduced freqency of the "BTW" phrasing, but she is still offering extra info. example, i asked her just now "where's my stuff," which she answered and then gave a "BTW" to let me know she could suggest my next book on amazon kindle. then i asked for the weather tonight, which she answered, but then asked me whether i also wanted the weather tomorrow. that kind of thing.

yeah it's been a while. it's funny, the week-ish after you originally posted (Nov '21) South Park Post COVID aired and features Alexa in the future. they kinda nailed it.

nunsexmonkrock
Apr 13, 2008
I like my original Echo dot - I mostly have it play CNN or CBSN using tune-in as background noise - Or if I want to piss myself off Fox News. Don't really pay attention to it but if I got an Echo Show will it play video from tune-in? Only thing is when I do actually listen to the news sometime they talk about things that they are showing and it's hard to understand sometimes what they are talking about.

Maneki Neko
Oct 27, 2000

Oh fun, looks like Amazon pushed out an update that broke zigbee device control for the Echo devices that supported that, in case you are like me and trying a device reset. Mine didn't die until 10/29 but I guess we'll see if Amazon fixes it.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

We have a first gen Echo, the tall cylinder with the rotating top. Would there be any benefit to replacing it with one of the newer ones? We don’t use it as a speaker so improved speakers wouldn’t be a selling point.

Croatoan
Jun 24, 2005

I am inevitable.
ROBBLE GROBBLE

smackfu posted:

We have a first gen Echo, the tall cylinder with the rotating top. Would there be any benefit to replacing it with one of the newer ones? We don’t use it as a speaker so improved speakers wouldn’t be a selling point.

Well I mean sure, there's a lot of upgrades that have happened since that gen. It all depends on what you want it for? The latest gen has a thermometer, tapping functions so you can use it like an alarm clock and wi-fi hub. Also what are you even using a smart speaker for if you're not using the speaker?

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

We use it for timers and to play music on our Sonos system. It’s pretty good at that.

Maneki Neko
Oct 27, 2000

smackfu posted:

We have a first gen Echo, the tall cylinder with the rotating top. Would there be any benefit to replacing it with one of the newer ones? We don’t use it as a speaker so improved speakers wouldn’t be a selling point.

I've also got one of these hanging around and figured this is a just use it until it dies/stops getting updates situation. Unless you need smart home features from the newer units the overall experience seems the same on it vs anything else we have.

Bizarro Kanyon
Jan 3, 2007

Something Awful, so easy even a spaceman can do it!


My first generation echo has officially died. I think a surge struck it and killed it. It was probably the best sounding of our echos and the battery base made it so useful.

RIP to a real one.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

My two fun Alexa things lately:

“Alex what’s this song” worked despite the song being played from the Sonos app on a Sonos speaker not involving Alexa at all.

“Alexa turn off the TV” working somehow. I suspect this is Sonos doing magic also.

Lester Shy
May 1, 2002

Goodness no, now that wouldn't do at all!
Am I stupid or is there no way to create a routine that plays music from a specific speaker group? I want to play a TuneIn station from my "Everywhere" group every morning at a certain time, but I can only select individual Echo devices in the routine page.

Bizarro Kanyon
Jan 3, 2007

Something Awful, so easy even a spaceman can do it!


When you write out the command add on my everywhere group to the end like “play tunein radio on my everywhere group”. I use that for SiriusXM and my daughters in the morning. It works well 90% of the time but I have been having issues in the last two weeks. Now, my everywhere group will not work with one specific echo (out of 4 included in the group) is kept in the group. Remove that one echo and the command works without issue.

notaspy
Mar 22, 2009

Hello thread, I have Alexa's all over my house because benzos rules and Musk drools.

I have Spotify linked to my Alexa's which is great apart from when my partner or kids want to listen yo something while we are different rooms. What happens is their stuff starts playing and I can't even listen on my laptop or mobile.

I have tried linking to a shared family account but that means I can not long link my mobile to my Alexa's.

So I tried to setting up my partner on her phone and thia is where it gets even worse. Even when her account is the one that is linked her Spotify can't see the Alexa's.

We are both on an Amazon family plan and a Spotify family plan.

I did notice that all the Alexa's are registered to me personally, if that has an impact.

I've tried looking on the internet for a solution but it has been no help.

Slash
Apr 7, 2011

notaspy posted:

Hello thread, I have Alexa's all over my house because benzos rules and Musk drools.

I have Spotify linked to my Alexa's which is great apart from when my partner or kids want to listen yo something while we are different rooms. What happens is their stuff starts playing and I can't even listen on my laptop or mobile.

I have tried linking to a shared family account but that means I can not long link my mobile to my Alexa's.

So I tried to setting up my partner on her phone and thia is where it gets even worse. Even when her account is the one that is linked her Spotify can't see the Alexa's.

We are both on an Amazon family plan and a Spotify family plan.

I did notice that all the Alexa's are registered to me personally, if that has an impact.

I've tried looking on the internet for a solution but it has been no help.

The way we "solved" this problem in our house. You can add multiple amazon accounts to alexa and use "alexa switch account" to switch between them. You can then add the Spotify skill to each account linked to different spotify accounts.

It was too clunky for us in the end, so we just use one spotify account across the whole house and deal with it. Since amazon added the ability to recognise different voices it might work better now, but i think it'll still cause issues with multi-room groups.

Jack Bandit
Feb 6, 2005
Shit, I'm a free man and I haven't had a conjugal visit in six months
I’m just glad I’m not the only one who runs into this.

Back when I noticed it happening years ago I couldn’t find any other results online about it.

We just work around it too but it’s annoying.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

Amazon’s latest joke is messing with the “play some music” command. Half the time in the last couple of days it has suggested I might want to hear “Cinderella Snapped” by Jax instead of just playing my Apple Music. Wonder how much that ad placement cost the label.

Bizarro Kanyon
Jan 3, 2007

Something Awful, so easy even a spaceman can do it!


My wife and I are talking about getting an echo show 15 for Christmas. Right now, they are $205 (down from $280) and if we trade in our original echo ($5 trade in value!!!), we will get another 20% off (takes it down to around $160).

We would mostly be using it for family organization (calendar, reminders, sticky notes, to do lists, etc). Before we buy one, I had a few questions and I hoping someone here has one and can help.

1) our current smaller echo shows (we have an 8 and two 5s) cycle through home screens, does the show 15 also cycle through or will it remain with just calendars, etc on the main screen?

2) is there a good chore app (for our kids) that integrates well with the show 15?

3) is it better to have it mounted on the wall or on a stand on a counter?

If it cannot handle those first two questions, then my wife was looking at this (which is not my favorite option).

Skylight Calendar: 15 inch Digital Calendar & Chore Chart, Smart Touchscreen Interactive Display for Family Schedules - Wall Mount Included https://a.co/d/1P9c3Po

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Croatoan
Jun 24, 2005

I am inevitable.
ROBBLE GROBBLE

Bizarro Kanyon posted:

My wife and I are talking about getting an echo show 15 for Christmas. Right now, they are $205 (down from $280) and if we trade in our original echo ($5 trade in value!!!), we will get another 20% off (takes it down to around $160).

We would mostly be using it for family organization (calendar, reminders, sticky notes, to do lists, etc). Before we buy one, I had a few questions and I hoping someone here has one and can help.

1) our current smaller echo shows (we have an 8 and two 5s) cycle through home screens, does the show 15 also cycle through or will it remain with just calendars, etc on the main screen?

2) is there a good chore app (for our kids) that integrates well with the show 15?

3) is it better to have it mounted on the wall or on a stand on a counter?

If it cannot handle those first two questions, then my wife was looking at this (which is not my favorite option).

Skylight Calendar: 15 inch Digital Calendar & Chore Chart, Smart Touchscreen Interactive Display for Family Schedules - Wall Mount Included https://a.co/d/1P9c3Po

1) our current smaller echo shows (we have an 8 and two 5s) cycle through home screens, does the show 15 also cycle through or will it remain with just calendars, etc on the main screen?
It cycles through the exact same
2) is there a good chore app (for our kids) that integrates well with the show 15?
not really. The widgets suck rear end. They are the exact same widgets you get on the 8 if you want to play with them before you buy
3) is it better to have it mounted on the wall or on a stand on a counter?
Mine's on a wall behind my office desk.

All that being said, I LOVE mine. It's a piece of poo poo and is horribly supported. Amazon does not give a gently caress about the 15 even though it was meant to be a flagship product. Regardless, I love it as an echo and I love the big screen for my family photos it cycles through but that's literally it.

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