Category Archives: Amazon Echo

Echo now talks to Hue and WeMo

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Echo Connected HomeWhile I was asleep last night, Amazon pushed an Amazing update out to Echo. Echo can now talk to my Philips Hue lights AND my WeMo Home Automation devices!

You can now say things like

Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights.

or even..

Alexa, turn on the coffee!

I tried out these very commands this morning. The results…? My life is now complete.  The home automation scene NEEDED a device like this… an omni-directional speech recognition device that integrates to existing platforms.  And now we have it. At least, the start of it. I would love to see Dropcam and Nest integration among other things.

Bravo, Amazon.

Amazon Echo now does Traffic

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Amazon Echo Traffic ReportsAmazon is slowly rolling out new features to the Echo, and today’s update introduced traffic reports. The functionality as it is today is rather limited: You need to configure the to and from destinations in the app before she can give you a report – just ask “Alexa, how is traffic?”

And that is all she can do right now… just report on the traffic between those two locations. I tried asking about the “traffic to RDU airport” and several other locations, and the response was “I can not find the answer to the question I heard”.

I find myself in the camp that appreciates frequent, steady updates (versus huge updates once a quarter), so I’m looking forward to the many feature additions the Amazon team will surely add in the future.

Here’s a quick video of the traffic report in action:

Update (3/13/2015): Just saw the mail they sent out this update.  Apparently, they’ve also added a new Celtic Prime Playlist in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

Echo Traffic Email