Amazon Echo Club

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

My gen2 show5 no longer shows the ring doorbell camera. It says "OK", goes blank for a bit, then reverts to the clock, no error reported it just gives up. Tablets and phones have no problem showing the cam.

My gen 1 Show 5 won’t keep the clock face and style I choose. It might display it for a few hours, but it always reverts back to a blue and green screen with artistic waves drawn in. I’m really pissed right now that Amazon has screwed up the clock so badly. This started a few days ago with a FW update. My Echo Plus 2 and Fire TV Cube 2 both updated in the past few days too but they seem okay. I’ve also got two Dot 3s and one Dot 2, but I’m not sure if they updated as well, but they all work as before. Not sure why the Show 5 is such a mess, but it has always been one. It does a decent job of showing lyrics when playing songs, but other than that it is mostly useless.

[OtinG]

Concerning the Show 5 (1st and 2nd generations) clock issues, I found some complaints in the Amazon customer support forum. Amazon claims it is aware of the issues and they are working on a fix. Apparently the latest FW update screwed things up worse. The main issue seems to be that the Show 5 won't let you customize the clock any more, and instead it chooses a blue wave background image and a digital clock face. Attempts to modify the clock background and face get overridden. So if you have that issue, hopefully they will get it sorted out, but don't hold your breath...

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Concerning the Show 5 (1st and 2nd generations) clock issues, I found some complaints in the Amazon customer support forum. Amazon claims it is aware of the issues and they are working on a fix. Apparently the latest FW update screwed things up worse. The main issue seems to be that the Show 5 won't let you customize the clock any more, and instead it chooses a blue wave background image and a digital clock face. Attempts to modify the clock background and face get overridden. So if you have that issue, hopefully they will get it sorted out, but don't hold your breath...

I don't have that issue with my 1st gen Show 5. In fact, I've never had any major issues with it. It's still my favorite Echo device and it gets used multiple times every day.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I don't have that issue with my 1st gen Show 5. In fact, I've never had any major issues with it. It's still my favorite Echo device and it gets used multiple times every day.

It probably hasn’t updated to FW 5805754244 yet.

Mine has been a POS from the start. Photo backgrounds of clocks rarely work well. Clock keeps toggling off and on. Tips keep trying to display when they are turned off. And the damn thing cannot hear me from two feet away, but my Dot 3s two rooms away behind a closed door can. Maybe it got a bad set of chips.

Currently it only displays digital clock faces, no analog clock faces. It keeps defaulting to the attached bland clock background.

ETA: Last night (8 Oct 2021) I installed firmware update 5805754756. I can now use personal photos again as well as analog clocks. (See 2nd attached image.) However, the interface is still very non-intuitive and clunky and looks like it was developed by morons. Plus it takes a while (sometimes hours) for the proper photo(s) to be displayed. It is still very flaky!

ETA 2: I wonder if the issue with personal photos is more a Amazon Photos snafu than just a Show 5 FW fiasco. Amazon's Alexa app on iOS and iPadOS are both flaky and non-intuitive in places, especially when setting the Show 5 to use personal photos for the clock background from an iPhone or iPad. That has been an issue for a long time. It often takes several attempts to get the photos loaded correctly. Last night it simply quit working. So I set up an album in Amazon Photos cloud service just for the Show 5, and placed a few photos therein. That works, sort of, but it literally takes the Show a few hours to update to the selected photo. Clearly the FW is screwed up big time on the Show 5, and the Alexa app is flaky too. And of course Amazon Photos cloud service is also flaky and not well designed. Frankly I’m surprised Bezos was able to get a rocket into suborbital space for a few seconds with such incompetent employees.

……

[cc_in_oh]

Can Amazon PLEASE figure out a way to mass-change the WiFi passwords on all smart devices? Doing them one by one is an all day job.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

Can Amazon PLEASE figure out a way to mass-change the WiFi passwords on all smart devices? Doing them one by one is an all day job.

That is a PITA with Apple too, except with Apple they have a Password keychain system where you can have the system record selected passwords if you want to, and then it remembers them. You can also update them in the keychain when they change. But you often still have to enter them on each device separately after change, although once you do one the rest can be populated from the keychain without having to type out the password. I recently restored an iPad and the apps, but I still had to log into each app that has a password and enter the passwords again, or populate them from the keychain. So not a lot of fun.

At any rate, I don't think Amazon has a password management app like Apple's. It seems like they could ask if you want to update a specific password on all of the devices that use that specific password, then execute the update on them automatically, but I guess they probably never will do that.

[John F]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

Can Amazon PLEASE figure out a way to mass-change the WiFi passwords on all smart devices? Doing them one by one is an all day job.

Doesn't Amazon have the ability to save wifi passwords to the cloud?

[ApK]

Originally Posted by John F

Doesn't Amazon have the ability to save wifi passwords to the cloud?

Apparently:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/help/cus...deId=201730860

Not sure what happens to already-connected devices if you change a cloud-saved password. Presumably they would not even be aware they needed a new password until they lost connection and had to reconnect.

[cc_in_oh]

Once you reconfigure a device the new password is stored, but but other devices no longer have access and need to be put back into setup mode manually to reconnect. Amazon devices aren't too bad but non-Amazon smart bulbs and such may need to be re-added from scratch, then reassigned to rooms, groups, routines etc.I have 2 Amazon Sengled bulbs that I could change right in the Alexa app, but my 4 non-Amazon Sengled bulbs had to be re-added using the Sengled app then configured in Alexa.

It would help if smart devices could be given a "backup" network & password while still connected, then use that when the first one is disabled.

If you don't mind using your primary network, then reassigning devices to a guest network before changing helps some. It would be even better if routers supported 2 2.4 ghz guest networks so you could shuffle devices between them without losing connections I think at least on some routers guest networks offer slightly better security.

Probably much better possibilities to streamline the process but those are a couple that occur to me.

[OtinG]

Unfortunately the handshakes between various devices, including the router that runs the WiFi and the devices connected to the WiFi, don't always work in a smart way. Each manufacturer does its own thing. If you swap out one Wifi network with another, for example switch provider services, then it will take quite a while to go through every device and make those changes known to it so it can connect. Talk about a royal PITA. Also, if you make changes to your WiFi network, passwords or change server settings or etc., then you will have a lot of work ahead of you as for as updating the devices, and also you will need to update the settings in any apps on those devices that need to access the WiFi network.

Crap, even changing to a new payment method or changing the expiration dates on a charge/debit card that just got renewed can take hours because you have to manually change that information in every account that uses that particular card. I forgot to do that last year when my bank card expired and they sent me the new replacement. Everything was the same except the new expiration date on the card, but with that information no longer valid I started getting emails saying the payments had failed. I have a lot of auto payments set up for each month. So I quickly realized I had failed to make all the changes to all the accounts that get paid via that card, then spent hours updating all of them.

[John F]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Unfortunately the handshakes between various devices, including the router that runs the WiFi and the devices connected to the WiFi, don't always work in a smart way. Each manufacturer does its own thing. If you swap out one Wifi network with another, for example switch provider services, then it will take quite a while to go through every device and make those changes known to it so it can connect. Talk about a royal PITA. ...

A very good reason not to use the service provider's wifi router. Use your own wifi router and switching wifi routers is relatively simple?

[cc_in_oh]

Deploying a new router might be seamless if you change its defaults to your old SSID and password. But like anything else, network passwords should be changed periodically and that's when the frustration spikes...

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I forgot to do that last year when my bank card expired and they sent me the new replacement. Everything was the same except the new expiration date on the card, but with that information no longer valid I started getting emails saying the payments had failed.

I absolutely hate that this still happens.
It's stupid that in such an electronic world, we still have to manually update payment info on countless sites just because a card, with all the same info as old one, had it's expiry date renewed.

[Catlady]

I HATE SMART PLUGS!

[ApK]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I absolutely hate that this still happens.
It's stupid that in such an electronic world, we still have to manually update payment info on countless sites just because a card, with all the same info as old one, had it's expiry date renewed.

I wonder if that's the equivalent to forced periodic password resets. Like a check point to make you reassert you have the new card.