Amazon Echo Club

[wodin]

Originally Posted by wodin

Well I enabled calling, and went home last night to test it, I said "Alexa; call wodin" and wallah - she called my cell phone!

NOT WHAT I WANTED!!!

I wanted her to ring all the Echos in my house, and establish a voice connection (video if I buy some Shows) between the calling one and the answering one. In other words a whole house intercom.
...

I dropped Jeff's kids a note quoting the above, we'll see what they say. They've been pretty responsive in the past, but I'm sure they're pretty busy righn now.

[kansaskyle]

I read on a another site that Amazon will release an intercom feature on existing Echo and Dot devices when the Show launches. I'm not sure if Taps will be included.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by wodin

I dropped Jeff's kids a note quoting the above, we'll see what they say. They've been pretty responsive in the past, but I'm sure they're pretty busy righn now.

I received this last night.

Originally Posted by Jeff's Kids

Hello Wodin,

I understand that you want to create a house intercom with the Alexa voice calling feature.

I would like to inform you currently this feature is not available. I apologize if this causing you any inconvenience or disappointment.

To make things right, I've forwarded your suggestions and this e-mail to the Amazon Echo Development Team for consideration to add this feature to Alexa in future.

They shall surely look into this matter and shall come up with the possible software update. As you might have noticed, we are carefully reviewing potential features to add to the Echo in the upcoming months.

Your feedback and suggestions are very important for us to make sure we improve the product where it lacks or to be rectified so that, it gives better performance to our Alexa customers so that you may make the best use of it enjoy it to the utmost.

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us and letting us know what you want to see on your Alexa device and what we can do to improve it.

Please be assured, once the feature is implemented or any improvements made in our next updates, we'll try to notify you through the best medium of notification via software updates.

I assure you that in future, we will come up with necessary improvements to our services and devices making it easy and convenient for all our customers to use Alexa device.

However, Please understand that Alexa is in its initial stages and is developing quickly to access new software updates.

Currently the Echo is considered to be in the early stages of development, although this can be frustrating currently, I can assure you that the Echo will continue to advance as time progresses.

If you have suggestions to the device, don't hesitate to let us know. We are evolving the device based on information provided by people just like you!

I want to let you know that we are working on additional feature for our Echo as part of the next software. Please be assured that your feedback will be considered as we plan further improvements.

I appreciate the time you are taking to let us know how the device is preforming.

The more you let us know how you use your Echo, the opportunities we have to mold the device into the perfect personal assistant.

As you know, we at Amazon love our customers, but I want to personally thank you for being apart of Alexa's family as she evolves.

For the meantime, please extend with us your patience and understanding while we work on this.​​

Your patience and co-operation is highly appreciated in this matter.

In meanwhile if you have any further queries please reach out at:

By phone:
https://www.amazon.com/clicktocall-alexasupport

By email:
alexa-support@amazon.com

By chat:
https://www.amazon.com/clicktochat-alexachatsupport

We look forward to seeing you again soon.

We'd appreciate your feedback. Please use the buttons below to vote about your experience today.

Best regards,
Arsalan
Amazon.com

Meh, they could have drafted a better form letter without all the repeats.

[copyrite]

Originally Posted by wodin

I received this last night.



Meh, they could have drafted a better form letter without all the repeats.

I thought the intercom feature is supposed to be rolled out to the Echo etc when the Look thingie is released? That was posted in an Amazon forum by someone who is usually in the know.

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

[ApK]

Originally Posted by copyrite

I thought the intercom feature is supposed to be rolled out to the Echo etc when the Look thingie is released? That was posted in an Amazon forum by someone who is usually in the know.

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

I'm not sure I understand your comment. Are you wondering why the broken-English form letter from the over-seas level-1 support person didn't mention the upcoming feature, if the forum post was correct?

[copyrite]

Originally Posted by ApK

I'm not sure I understand your comment. Are you wondering why the broken-English form letter from the over-seas level-1 support person didn't mention the upcoming feature, if the forum post was correct?

Exactly! Pardon my sorta broken English.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by copyrite

Exactly! Pardon my sorta broken English.

Ah. Then, here's a useful rule: don't expect form letters from level-1 support to ever have complete, current, accurate, or even relevant information.

That post in the forum here, that's probably accurate.

The intercom feature should be fairly easy for them to implement. Whether Bezos Bozos can pull it off is another story. And how well they implement it, if they do, is still another story. I think for it to work really well, you will need to be able to communicate between specific Alexa devices within the home/office rather than just blast the voice over all the devices. Otherwise you would annoy the whole household when you only want to talk with a specific person in a specific room. I doubt the intercom will work between Alexa devices on separate accounts though. So if your kids have their own account, that might be problematic unless Amazon allows multiple accounts to use the intercom system. Obviously Amazon really needs to thoroughly think this through, and that is one thing they rarely do.

[wodin]

All of my Echos are on the same account. What I want them to do is to establish an intercom link from the one that I'm near (initiating device), and blast the whole house. When someone answers from another Echo (answering device), limit the link to only those two. Then close the link when either of them are told to hang up. It would be nice if the whole house blast could include the name of the person I want to talk to.

The syntax of the initiating and answering commands is unimportant just so everyone knows it.

It might go something like this:

me in living room: "Alexa; intercom wife"
Alexa: "OK" {optional}
whole house: "wife"
wife in bedroom: "Alexa; answer"
Link limited to living room and bedroom
Conversation
Living room or bedroom: "Alexa; stop intercom"
link closed


That doesn't seem so hard to me, but then I'm not a software engineer, and even if I were I don't have the source code for the Echo's firmware.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by wodin

All of my Echos are on the same account. What I want them to do is to establish an intercom link from the one that I'm near (initiating device), and blast the whole house. When someone answers from another Echo (answering device), limit the link to only those two. Then close the link when either of them are told to hang up. It would be nice if the whole house blast could include the name of the person I want to talk to.

The syntax of the initiating and answering commands is unimportant just so everyone knows it.

It might go something like this:

me in living room: "Alexa; intercom wife"
Alexa: "OK" {optional}
whole house: "wife"
wife in bedroom: "Alexa; answer"
Link limited to living room and bedroom
Conversation
Living room or bedroom: "Alexa; stop intercom"
link closed


That doesn't seem so hard to me, but then I'm not a software engineer, and even if I were I don't have the source code for the Echo's firmware.

Contributing to the fantasy, I would suggest two changes to your scenario:
Instead of the whole house saying "wife", it would say "calling 'wife' from {name of initating station}"

And, if instead of "wife" you said the name of another device (or a contact name, or however a device is recognized for calling) then it would not alert the whole house, but just that station.

[wodin]

Yup,
that'd work too; unless I didn't happen to know where wife was. I'm not sure Alexa is smart enough to distinguish between "wife in the bedroom" and "wife, wherever she happens to be".

Originally Posted by wodin

Yup,
that'd work too; unless I didn't happen to know where wife was. I'm not sure Alexa is smart enough to distinguish between "wife in the bedroom" and "wife, wherever she happens to be".

I suspect that Alexa could care less who you are trying to reach. She will likely only care about which Alexa enabled device(s) you are trying to reach. Amazon cannot even get stupid Alexa to recognize individual voices yet, so don't expect them to be able to differentiate between your wife and the dog barking. I suspect that the intercom feature will be just like smart home device control. You have to name each device and then use that name in the voice command via a Skill:

"Alexa, Lamp on."

"Alexa, Porch Light off."

So the likely commands might be something like this:

"Alexa, Intercom call to ALL. Blah blah blah...."

"Alexa, Intercom call to Master Bedroom. Blah blah blah...."

[ApK]

Originally Posted by wodin

Yup,
that'd work too; unless I didn't happen to know where wife was. I'm not sure Alexa is smart enough to distinguish between "wife in the bedroom" and "wife, wherever she happens to be".

My suggestion was that if you say a specific station name, it calls only that station. If you say anything else not recognized as a destination ("wife," "Tommy," "My idiot sister") then it broadcasts to the house.

Of course, it really should just work like the communicators on Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the computer just identifies and locates you. But, you know, privacy concerns.....kidding.

As stupid as Alexa is at the moment, and considering she cannot get a lot of simple commands correct, I think the intercom feature will likely blow chunks for the foreseeable future. I think a truly usable intercom system is way beyond the ability of Bezo's Bozos to program. I suspect whatever they provide, it will be highly limited in functionality and prone to failure more often than not. Eventually they might get it right, but I'm not holding my breath until then.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by wodin

Yup,
that'd work too; unless I didn't happen to know where wife was. I'm not sure Alexa is smart enough to distinguish between "wife in the bedroom" and "wife, wherever she happens to be".

Just how many wives do you have?