So my brother thought it would be a cute thing every time one of my kids had a birthday to ship them a refurb dot (among other things) and the way our house is built, all the bedrooms are in the back and my son's room is the downstairs basement turned bedroom..DEFINITELY out of hearing range except when shouting and if the kids have on headphones or the music is turned up they won't hear us.

like an idiot yesterday i said out loud 'i wish these stupid amazon dots would function like an intercom'

well of course they do. in the last 12 hours this has become a life-changing feature.

i used it to call both girls to dinner last night while i lounged on the sofa sipping a bourbon and to tell my older daughter to get off her computer and go to bed (from the living room), and this morning my wife was in daugther#1's room and used it to page my son who was asleep downstairs in the basement bedroom that she was in a bind moving a mattress and he came up and helped her while she was still struggling.

frick wink relay. it cant activate room-to-room intercom via voice like this in such an easy, elegant way.

no hardware buttons to hold down, just say 'drop in' to open a dot-to-dot connection and have a conversation.

This post was edited on 9/21/17 at 11:00 am

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Posted by LSUtigerME

Walker, LA

Member since Oct 2012

3797 posts

Posted on 9/21/17 at 11:31 am to CAD703X

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Posted by TigerinATL

Member since Feb 2005

61514 posts

Posted on 9/21/17 at 11:50 am to LSUtigerME

Yeah, seeing CADs transformation on Amazon has been entertaining. Although to be fair, I don't think he ever really hated Amazon. In one of his "anti Amazon" rants he said he was getting rid of Prime because it made him buy too much stuff

On the subject of the Echo being a great product, I'm really curious to see where things are in 5 years. I had been of the opinion that while new homes would have plenty of Smart Home tech, most people won't upgrade their older homes with Smart fixtures. That's a lot of work or expense, but Alexa controlling your media center and intercoming the kids could prove to be a gateway into wanting Alexa to do more stuff.

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Posted by CAD703X

Liberty Island

Member since Jul 2008

78101 posts

Posted on 9/21/17 at 12:04 pm to TigerinATL

quote:
Yeah, seeing CADs transformation on Amazon has been entertaining. Although to be fair, I don't think he ever really hated Amazon. In one of his "anti Amazon" rants he said he was getting rid of Prime because it made him buy too much stuff

On the subject of the Echo being a great product, I'm really curious to see where things are in 5 years. I had been of the opinion that while new homes would have plenty of Smart Home tech, most people won't upgrade their older homes with Smart fixtures. That's a lot of work or expense, but Alexa controlling your media center and intercoming the kids could prove to be a gateway into wanting Alexa to do more stuff.

to be fair my opinion evolved over time in that original thread from 'echo is useless' to 'sort of want' to 'ok it does some cool things'.

the 3 best things about echo to me are:

- ad lib voice control of home automation. this, coupled with schedules and triggers allows my home automation to be more 'gentle' rather than having to either have EVERY DOODAD perfectly tuned or i have to go hunt for my damn phone to change something. voice control softens it so if we have a late dinner one night and the dining room lights go out at 9pm (like they are scheduled to)

i can turn them back on without getting up from the table.

- as my hue addiction has grown, being able to change colors, white temperature and dim them via voice is super handy. nothing like sitting at the kitchen island trying to solder something and saying out loud 'alexa set the island to concentrate' and all 4 hue bulbs turn bright blue-white

- new-found love of intercom. i was on the verge of a costly/yucky installation of wink relays in every room of the house i wanted an intercom and boom, frick that noise. alexa just ran wink the frick over with its 'drop in' feature.

my 2 year old thinks alexa is a person

he tries to get up on the shelf and talk to her and wanted to share his mac & cheese with 'her' the other day

so damn cute. she's finally recognizing his voice when he says 'alexa' and that tickles him to no end. for awhile he couldn't say it good enough for the dot to respond.

ETA MY LOVE OF THE DOT DOES NOT EQUATE TO MY LOVING AMAZON IN GENERAL

This post was edited on 9/21/17 at 12:06 pm

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Posted by Korkstand

Member since Nov 2003

28709 posts

Posted on 9/21/17 at 12:24 pm to CAD703X

quote:
MY LOVE OF THE DOT DOES NOT EQUATE TO MY LOVING AMAZON IN GENERAL

That's what you think.

You are a perfect case study for Amazon's strategy with Echo/Alexa. It won't be long before, instead of asking Alexa to turn up the lights while you solder something, you ask her to send a replacement for whatever piece of shite you were soldering, and it arrives an hour later, during which time you went back to sipping your bourbon on the couch.

We'll be here to watch your transition.

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Posted by GFunk