The Seven Best Things You Can Do With Amazon Echo

Posted on March 30, 2016 by resourcefulman

Amazon Echo offers us our first serious look at the future of the smart home. It’s not perfect, but if you’re thinking about getting an Echo, whether you hear people talking about “Alex” or aren’t sure what the one you have is capable of, here are some of the best things you can do with her. … …

When Amazon first echoedthis ridiculous ad , it was very difficult for me to take it seriously. It seemed like a silly niche product in the already crowded Bluetooth speaker market. However, after I got my hands on one of them, I started experimenting with all the ways to integrate it with other devices. Soon after, I fell in love with it. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the really awesome things the Echo can do, and how to do them well.

Listen to almost any song just by asking

Echo is a speaker. He plays music. Did you understand. But it happens in so many wonderful ways that we need to talk about it. When Echo launched, you could play music from your smartphone like any other Bluetooth speaker, only by requesting music available through Amazon Prime Music or by requesting songs that you yourself uploaded to Amazon Cloud Drive. Amazon’s library is large enough that you can ask for a song and get it in most cases, but you can also request playlists or play by artist. Sometimes Echo can suggest a playlist for your mood or for a specific holiday. If you want to know what I’m talking about, try some of these commands:

Alexa, play Christmas music .
Alexa, play some meditation tracks .
Alexa, play a little Adele .
Alexa, play the playlist _________. (Fill in the blank with the name of the playlist you created in your Amazon Music / Amazon Cloud Player account and Echo will start working.)

Those were the early days, but now you can use Spotify as well. If you pay for Spotify Unlimited and want to access everything it has to offer via echo, you only need to ask ( after you connect your account , of course):

Alexa, play Tony’s Got Hot Nuts from Spotify.
Alexa, listen to Lil Johnson ‘s Spotify songs.

You can also query for playlists, genres, and even composers if you finish your teams with Spotify . You can find a complete list of commands here if you want to explore.

Find new opportunities

Isn’t it nice to know when you get feature updates? Usually, you need to subscribe to an email list and then actually read the email that talks about the new features, or just search the internet for them when you remember. With Echo, you can simply ask:

Alexa, what new features do you have?

Every time Amazon adds something new, they program an explanation in Alexa, and she will tell you all the details just by asking this question.

Build and manage your smart home, even if you rent

Echo integrates with various home automation centers such as Wink , Insteon and SmartThings . You can also connect other smart devices like Philips Hue Lights , Belkin WeMo , Sensi , Ecobee and others (thanks to some of the previously mentioned hubs and you can find Amazon’s updated listing here ). I always thought that a smart home with voice control was not available because I rent and I have little money, but Echo changed that. Now I can control my light, the temperature in the apartment and even turn on the video recording setting with a simple command. This is by far my favorite service that Echo provides.

Voice commands differ slightly depending on the devices you are using and how you call them in the Alexa app ( or the Internet if you are sneaky). I can’t list all the examples, but I can suggest a few to give you an idea:

Alexa, turn on the bedroom light . (I have a set of Philips Hue fixtures listed as bedroom fixtures for Alexa, so she knows which ones to access when I call them.)
Alexa, turn on the bedroom light 50%. (Want less light in your room? Just enter a percentage!)
Alexa, turn the heat up to 72. (If you have a connected thermostat like the Nest or Ecobee 3, you can set it up to respond to that command.)
Alexa, turn on video mode. (When I want to record video, this command triggers a pair of Belkin WeMo smart switches in my home, which I call “video mode” in the Alex app. This turns on the camera and lights up the recording room.)

You can do a lot more with your home automation devices with integration hubs. I have a Wink Hub that I haven’t had time to set up yet, and it will open up a lot more home automation options for me. It used to be the only option, but if you have a hub it probably works with the Echo these days. Just add your devices to the Alexa app and play with all the fun.

Get the weather (and other useful information)

You can find the weather in a wide variety of locations. It’s the same with time. But have you ever had to put on your underwear and think about how long it took, halfway through and then fell over trying to get to the phone because you are an idiot who can’t get dressed first? Probably not, unless you are me, but I’m sure you can remember a time when you wanted to know the basic information that a look could provide you if you were just your phone, computer, or any other device that you prefer were within reach. It’s simple and lazy, but incredibly convenient. Try these commands:

Alexa, what’s the weather? (It will tell you in much more detail than you want, but you will see highs and lows and chances of rain, so don’t worry. If you want to know the weather anywhere, you don’t just add “in New York City” or anywhere .)
Alexa, what time is it? (She will tell you! Again, you can also ask the time at a specific location. I find this very useful when scheduling phone meetings and interviews with people in other time zones.)
Alexa, where do I go to work? (If you enter your home and work addresses, it will tell you what traffic is and how long it will take. This feature is pretty awful because you can only specify one route at a time, but it’s still good to know.)

You can also set up news briefings and other information in the Alexa app to ask much more.

Listen to a book or article

Unsurprisingly, Echo integrates with another Amazon company: Audible . If you have Audible audiobooks, you can listen to them on Echo with simple voice commands and sync your seat. You can even set a sleep timer to fall asleep so you can listen well. Let’s try:

Alexa, play the Animal Farm audiobook . (If your library has a copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm , it will play. Swap for any book you have in your library.)
Alexa, keep reading my book. (Whichever book you last listened to – probably Animal Farm – Alexa will resume her reading with this command.)
Alexa, come back. Alexa, go ahead. (If you want to skip forward or backward in a book 30 seconds, these commands will do it for you.)
Alexa, stop reading the book in 30 minutes. (This will set the sleep timer and the book will stop after 30 minutes or whatever time you specify.)

You might find Audible Commands more fun here , but that’s not all you can do with books. Amazon also offers several Kindle books that don’t have audio companions but can hear through voice synthesis.

Alexa, read Dump Dinners: The Absolute Best Cookbook for Dump Dinners with 75 amazingly simple recipes . (Yes, if you have this Kindle book, Alexa will read it to you.)
Alexa, pause. (You must know this command when listening to a cookbook called Dump Dinners. It will prevent her from reading it.)

Alexa can also read articles on Wikipedia. These commands should be enough:

Alexa, wikipedia Lifehacker . (You can also pronounce the wiki if you like, but I find the full name is less cumbersome to say out loud. Either option will give you a short description of the topic you’re asking for.)
Alexa, read more on Wikipedia. (She will tell you to say this if you want to know more about the topic you requested, but I tell you ahead of time.)

You don’t need to read anymore! Alexa can replace your parents, and you can travel back in time to your childhood days when your mom read you cookbooks and Wikipedia articles before bed.

Use Alexa as your kitchen assistant

When the Echo was first announced, experts joked that Alexa would be a great kitchen assistant, but nothing more. Well, it certainly does a lot of other things, but it still helps you a lot with your food preparation. She can convert measurements and units for you, and she can set timers to prevent you from burning food that you have measured properly:

Alexa, how many cups are there in a quart?
Alexa, how many tablespoons are in butter?
Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes.

If that’s not enough, don’t forget that she can read you Dump Dinner: The Absolute Best Cookbook with 75 amazingly simple recipes anytime you want! If you don’t have the time and practically no energy to cook and read, just let Alexa tell you how to pour lunch into a saucepan and work magic. It’s like you didn’t even cook.

Pretty much everything else with IFTTT

Echo also connects to IFTTT . With it, you can automate anything and even save money . To get an idea of its capabilities, visit our IFTTT tags page . Echo always kind of worked with it, but it’s better gotten a lot in recent weeks. Now you can run entire recipes with a simple voice command ( after setup , of course):

Alexa, activate Party Time. (This team runs Philip Hue Light’s popular, more complex recipe called Party Time. You can view it here and see why this method offers more options than Amazon’s direct Philips Hue integration.)
Alexa, send me my shopping list. (You can ask Alexa to add an item to your shopping list by telling Alexa add batteries to my shopping list. It will then be available through the speaker or in the Alexa app, but this recipe can automatically email the contents of that list to you make this function really useful. You can also do this with your to-do list !)

Not everything requires a voice command. You can also set up IFTTT to record the songs you listen to in a spreadsheet for easier creation of playlists later. If you know IFTTT, you know the possibilities are nearly endless and you don’t need to use any of these pre-written recipes – or you can customize your own. Then tell Alexa to fire them up and you will be amazed.

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