Amazon Echo Club

Okay, so it seems that Skills are for 3rd party apps and devices to be able to interface with Alexa devices. Keep in mind that the Skills are developed by the 3rd parties who developed the apps and/or devices. Therefore Skills can be flaky. My TP-Link skill for example does not properly send Scenes created in its Kasa app to the Alexa app, and so Scenes cannot be used with their device via Alexa. The Scenes work fine using their Kasa app though.

[Catlady]

Obviously it makes sense that skills to control lights and thermostats and such need to be set up, or for things that involve personal accounts, but if I want a new recipe or a game, I don't care where it comes from. Clearly I did not properly understand the whole skills thing.

Regardless, I'm on the verge of ordering the Dot. Right now I've hooked up my Fire Tablet to my home stereo and I'm having Alexa play selections by my favorite singers--so much easier than finding the relevant CDs and/or mp3 files!

Originally Posted by Catlady

Obviously it makes sense that skills to control lights and thermostats and such need to be set up, or for things that involve personal accounts, but if I want a new recipe or a game, I don't care where it comes from. Clearly I did not properly understand the whole skills thing.

Regardless, I'm on the verge of ordering the Dot. Right now I've hooked up my Fire Tablet to my home stereo and I'm having Alexa play selections by my favorite singers--so much easier than finding the relevant CDs and/or mp3 files!

I haven't tried asking Alexa for a recipe before today. She had no clue and basically said she wasn't sure how to help me with my question. So I did some googling and see that recipes apparently require the set up of Skills. Here is a web page I found which might help you.

I too am a novice when it comes to Alexa Skills. I too see no reason why they would be necessary to find recipes, unless you wanted recipes from a specific web site/company. But apparently a Skill or several is indeed necessary. Setting up Skills is easy, but again, it seems like more effort than they advertised Alexa would require. There are a lot of things that don't require a Skill, like asking about the weather, traffic, sports scores, play a song or radio station. But some things require Skills. I still say Amazon must hire the rejects of Silicon Valley to design and implement their devices. Logic often is lacking therein.

[tubemonkey]

Well, I'm getting rid of my Echo. I'm giving it to one of my kids. It'll be replaced by Dots.

Dots here
Dots there
Dots everywhere

[tubemonkey]

Just ordered a Dot for $20.

See my post in the Black Friday thread for details.

[Yolina]

So how many dots do you have dotted around the place then monkey?

Just got an extra 30 days of Prime added for free after complaining that for the 3rd time in the space of 3 weeks, a package hasn't been delivered on the day it should have been...thanks Royal Mail...

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Yolina

So how many dots do you have dotted around the place then monkey?

Just got an extra 30 days of Prime added for free after complaining that for the 3rd time in the space of 3 weeks, a package hasn't been delivered on the day it should have been...thanks Royal Mail...

Either 3 or 4. Bedroom, bedroom, living room, and maybe kitchen.

Cool on the Prime, not so cool on the late delivery.

[Yolina]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Either 3 or 4. Bedroom, bedroom, living room, and maybe kitchen.

No too bad then

Cool on the Prime, not so cool on the late delivery.

Freebie is always good Slightly annoying but it was more to let them know that there has been an issue recently. Customer since 1999 and have never had problems with late deliveries until now, blah blah blah... They will allegedly feed back to the relevant team for when they review carriers.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I haven't tried asking Alexa for a recipe before today. She had no clue and basically said she wasn't sure how to help me with my question. So I did some googling and see that recipes apparently require the set up of Skills. Here is a web page I found which might help you.

I too am a novice when it comes to Alexa Skills. I too see no reason why they would be necessary to find recipes, unless you wanted recipes from a specific web site/company. But apparently a Skill or several is indeed necessary. Setting up Skills is easy, but again, it seems like more effort than they advertised Alexa would require. There are a lot of things that don't require a Skill, like asking about the weather, traffic, sports scores, play a song or radio station. But some things require Skills. I still say Amazon must hire the rejects of Silicon Valley to design and implement their devices. Logic often is lacking therein.

I wanted a pumpkin smoothie, so I asked for a pumpkin smoothie recipe. Repeatedly. Alexa kept saying, I don't understand the question--which was annoying as hell, since on the tablet my words were transcribed exactly correct (if I'd been asking a Dot, I would've thought maybe my enunciation was poor). When I finally just said Recipes, Alexa offered to enable three different recipe skills. I didn't know which to pick so then I gave up and made a banana smoothie instead.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I wanted a pumpkin smoothie, so I asked for a pumpkin smoothie recipe. Repeatedly. Alexa kept saying, I don't understand the question--which was annoying as hell, since on the tablet my words were transcribed exactly correct (if I'd been asking a Dot, I would've thought maybe my enunciation was poor). When I finally just said Recipes, Alexa offered to enable three different recipe skills. I didn't know which to pick so then I gave up and made a banana smoothie instead.

Allrecipes would be my choice.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/142434/pumpkin-smoothie/

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Allrecipes would be my choice.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/142434/pumpkin-smoothie/

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Catlady

Thanks!

One of the interesting ideas I saw on the web yesterday while researching asking Alexa for recipes was how to create your own. You can google to find it. The person said s/he recorded their own recipes to an audio file (mp3 I'm guessing) and placed the file wherever you place your music files on your phone/tablet. Then they could ask Alexa to play it back to them when they wanted hands-free recipe instructions read to them. Since you can pause an audio file, they could pause whenever they needed time to complete the recipe instructions. I really didn't check out all the details to how they did it.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by jswinden

One of the interesting ideas I saw on the web yesterday while researching asking Alexa for recipes was how to create your own. You can google to find it. The person said s/he recorded their own recipes to an audio file (mp3 I'm guessing) and placed the file wherever you place your music files on your phone/tablet. Then they could ask Alexa to play it back to them when they wanted hands-free recipe instructions read to them. Since you can pause an audio file, they could pause whenever they needed time to complete the recipe instructions. I really didn't check out all the details to how they did it.

Oh, that sounds pretty cool. Hmm. I wonder would it be possible to have Alexa read a recipe file using text to speech?

Originally Posted by Catlady

Oh, that sounds pretty cool. Hmm. I wonder would it be possible to have Alexa read a recipe file using text to speech?

Ah, we think alike! I don't care about recipes but other personal text would be nice. I think there are restrictions on which books Alexa will read though. I seem to recall they have to be actual purchased-via-Amazon Kindle books with the read text option set to ON. Perhaps someone else can elaborate. Creating personal docs would be easy enough, but Alexa has to be capable of reading them.

[Catlady]

I've come all the way over to the Dark Side and ordered a Dot. I'll probably end up just leaving it plugged into my home stereo and using it to play music.