What can the Amazon Echo do for me?

August 18th, 2015

There are a lot of gadgets out there that are designed to make your life simpler and fun

 

Today’s post is by Troy Lowe; Vice President of Development at SafeSourcing. Troy asks

There are a lot of gadgets out there that are designed to make your life simpler and fun.  I recently purchased such a device from Amazon called the Amazon Echo.  The Echo is a smart Wi-Fi device that you can give commands, ask questions, listen to streaming music and control other smart devices.  There are seven built-in microphones so that you can talk to the device from anywhere within the room it is located.  A remote control can be purchased separately and can be used for communicating from other rooms within your home.  The interface that is used to communicate with the device is called “Alexa”.  To communicate with the Echo you must first say the wake work Alexa.  The Echo only starts listening when this wake work is heard.

One of the reasons I purchased the Echo was to control appliances within my house.  So far I have purchased and installed two Belkin Wemo Light Switches.  Now I can control the lights in my kitchen and family room by asking Alexa to turn them on an off.  For example to turn on the kitchen lights you just say “Alexa turn on the kitchen lights”.  You can also setup up a group and by saying, “Alexa turn off the downstairs lights“ and it will turn off all of the lights that are configured within the “downstairs lights” group.

Besides home automation, there are numerous things that can be done by communicating with Alexa.
•  Get News Feeds
•  Get Weather Updates
•  Get Traffic Updates
•  Get Sports Updates
•  Create To-Do lists
•  Create Alarms and Timers
•  Check Upcoming Events on Google Calendar
•  Play AudibleBooks from Audible
•  Listen to Music from Various Streaming Services

If you would like some help finding a smart device, we can gather all the necessary information for you and help you decide which device meets your needs.  If you would like more information on how SafeSourcing can help you, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

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