Amazon Echo Club

[mlewis78]

My Tap arrived Tuesday. I think it's great and it sounds better than some of the reviews (one said it had no bass -- untrue).

So far my only problem is that when I used the internet Echo player on my laptop in the living room (Tap is in the bedroom), it played on the Tap instead of the Echo. When I tried to control the Tap in the bedroom with my iphone, it played on the Echo in the living room. I do not know how to make the app work with the device I want it to work with. I may have to call Amazon to find out.

I don't mind having to press the Tap to make a request. My bedroom is small and I keep the Tap within reach of the bed.

[ApK]

What is "the internet Echo player?"

[wodin]

Yes, my two Echos and one Dot often get confused as to which one is which. Until recently alarms and timers would go off all over the house. I had to run around to turn them off individually. I think a recent software upgrade fixed that because when I look up alarms in the app now they only show up for the device they were ordered from.

I still haven't figured out how music is assigned to which device.

Sometimes when I order a light turned on or off on one device, Alexa answers on a different one.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by ApK

What is "the internet Echo player?"

I guess mlewis78 is speaking of playing things straight from an Alexa app or from http://alexa.amazon.com.

[mlewis78]

I was referring to the player that is online for Echo. I use that a lot on my laptop.

Last night while using my iphone Alexa app, a screen popped up that showed I was using it for Echo and I could have changed it to Tap. I don't know what I did that made it come up but I would like to see that each time I need to change which speaker I am controlling with my phone.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by mlewis78

I was referring to the player that is online for Echo. I use that a lot on my laptop.

Last night while using my iphone Alexa app, a screen popped up that showed I was using it for Echo and I could have changed it to Tap. I don't know what I did that made it come up but I would like to see that each time I need to change which speaker I am controlling with my phone.

Imagine a household with 6 Dots, 3 Taps, and 2 Echos...

[DreamWriter]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Imagine a household with 6 Dots, 3 Taps, and 2 Echos...

Yikes!

[mlewis78]

Late last night I used the iphone to control the Tap and within Alexa's Tune-In Radio app there was an upside down ^ that was a drop down to change which speaker I was controlling. It showed there and in My Music Library. Perhaps it shows elsewhere but I haven't noticed.

My Tap had gone offline and I was going in circles getting it back on wi-fi. The Alexa app keeps telling me to connect to iphone with bluetooth, but really it wants me to choose the Amazon something under wi-fi in the iphone settings. Eventually it worked.

[WT Sharpe]

Did anyone else experience anything out of the ordinary with Alexa today? This morning when I spoke her name, the light on top of her head glowed red and Alexa told me she was having difficulty hearing me at the moment and to try again later. I turned off all background noises and tried again only to get the same message. She's okay, now.


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[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Did anyone else experience anything out of the ordinary with Alexa today? This morning when I spoke her name, the light on top of her head glowed red and Alexa told me she was having difficulty hearing me at the moment and to try again later. I turned off all background noises and tried again only to get the same message. She's okay, now.

It's happened to me before too. Never could figure it out.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Did anyone else experience anything out of the ordinary with Alexa today? This morning when I spoke her name, the light on top of her head glowed red and Alexa told me she was having difficulty hearing me at the moment and to try again later. I turned off all background noises and tried again only to get the same message. She's okay, now.


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"Not this morning Tom .... I have a headache ..."

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

"Not this morning Tom .... I have a headache ..."

[wodin]

Prolly updating her... uh... firmware.

[WT Sharpe]

Yes, I suppose a firmware update is possible. I doubt she had a headache; it's more likely she's jealous that I brought her more — shall we say, outgoing — sister into the house.


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[tubemonkey]

Here's an interesting article from Bloomberg about the creation of the Echo.

The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

The talking speaker started as part of a secret augmented-reality project and ended up as a surprise hit.

Telling Jeff Bezos he’s wrong is always a frightening proposition. In the fall of 2014, though, a small group of the men and women building Amazon’s new voice-controlled speaker felt they needed to confront the CEO. The release of the speaker was looming, and for the most part, things were falling into place. The device looked good, its voice recognition software was improving quickly, and even the boxes it would ship in had been designed and assembled. But there was a lingering issue with the name printed on those boxes: the Amazon Flash.

Many people who worked at Lab126, Amazon’s hardware division, hated the name, according to two former employees. Bezos, on the other hand, was strongly in favor. And there was another worry. A core feature of the device is a “wake word” that cues it to begin taking voice commands when spoken. One of the two words being considered was “Alexa.” Bezos thought the best word would be “Amazon.” This presented a challenge, because people say that word a lot. A common opinion within Lab126 was that the project was hurtling toward a potential disaster: The speakers would wake upon hearing Amazon ads on television and commence buying random stuff from the Internet.

Amazon created Lab126 in 2004 to build the Kindle e-reader. The lab’s name is a reference to the alphabet, with 1 representing the letter A and 26 representing Z. People in the lab sometimes refer to the Kindle as Project A. Project B was the Fire Phone. Work on the Echo—Project D—began in 2011. At the project’s peak, there were several hundred employees in Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Cambridge, Mass., who worked on D.

The idea for the Echo was an offshoot of Project C, and many of the early employees on the Echo moved over from C. Amazon remains particularly eager to keep this project a secret, even though work on it has stopped. But a sense of the focus and scope of the idea can be gleaned from patent applications filed by engineers at Lab126.