Amazon Alexa and Echo FAQ

deadl0ck

@flangemeistro my kids like this but they are a bit younger than yours - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rabbit-Who-Wants-Fall-Asleep/dp/0241255163/ref=sr_1_1?crid=XM88BNFG9AME&dchild=1&keywords=the+rabbit+who+wants+to+fall+asleep&qid=1589988774&sprefix=The+rabbit%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-1

You can get it as an audible audiobook that will play over alexa

EDIT: Sorry - I thought she was 13 - could be perfect for an 8 year old

flangemeistro

Thanks very much for the recommendations guys they were a great help.
I've run into a technical issue now though that has me absolutely stumped.
I move the echo dot from the kitchen to my daughter's bedroom and replaced it with an echo input as it was a bit of a waste anyway as it was connected to a Bose Soundtouch speaker.

I connected the input to the Bose AUX in with the 3.5mm cable provided but what's happening is when I ask Alexa to play say Today FM or 2fm or songs by Foo Fighters it's activating the Bose WiFi output which is fine until I ask Alexa to set a timer or ask her the weather it's complete silence as the AUX output on the BOSE is now on the WIFI output so I then manually have to select AUX on the Bose remote and ask her again but once I chose another song or station it goes back to WIFI output.
It's driving me crazy, and it's not a first world problem ; )

scamalert

fixed.
dunno which section is better to ask hue or here, but my alexa dots gen 2,3 been acting retarded lately with hue lights, if saying turn off room, 2 out of 3 bulbs would switch off, after renaming lights checking the firmware is all up to date, and deleting all of them from alexa app, discovered them again, added into the group just to see it work on turning on off, but dimming function is gone :cool: if i say alexa set room to 50 etc it makes sound as it does but no change - this kinda weird crap happens often specially where alexa loses connection to say turning off desk light where it says its not responsive yet few minutes later it picks up command and executes properly.



tl/Dr alexa wont dim hue lights even thou gives sound as it executes command, worked fine previously

edit: looked into alexa app, and for some reason lights had dublicates with completely different names, still working but after deleting the ones and asigning properly named ones to the group- dimming and all the other functions are back, go figure i guess.

Shefwedfan

flangemeistro wrote: »

Hi guys, looking for a bit of advice and it might be slightly off topic, the 8 year old daughter is going through a worried/overthinking phase where she thinks we're going to die and stuff like that, the usual.

Anyway she's arriving down from her bed every night at around 9:30 or 10 complaining with pains & any other excuse to be left stay up with us, we tried bringing her back up and reading her another story but she arrives down again, it's been going on a few weeks now and it's tough with another two younger kids & we don't want to be fobbing her off & it's also impacting on the little time my wife and I already have together so I thought of putting an echo into her room that would maybe tell her stories or relax her or just occupy her mind before she goes to sleep.

And no I'm not looking for a lazy babysitter before anyone says that, she's tucked in every night at a reasonable time & stories read to her.

So can anyone please recommend any should that you might think would suit and that might help a small bit.

Thanks in advance.

Unfortiuneatly the lack of school and all the change is hitting kids hard. Our 7 year old is at the same, all our friends have kids and they are struggling as well.



Some of our friends are trying mindfullness to see if that will help before going to bed.



Our little one was in her own room, we ended up buying bunkbeds and putting in with her brother. Younger brother :-) so a few nights of craziness because he was a baby(2 years younger) but now they go to bed together, they are messing for a while but go down fairly quickly


I have said I will buy them a CD player with book/cd they can play themselves and she can read the book as they go along. THey already have Alexa in the room but just for music. What ever you do dont teach them about "Announce" or you will be listening to "XYZ is a poo poo head " at 6.30 in the morning, I have everything on Alexa so that goes around the whole house :-)

iba

Hi,

My three echo dots all were offline when I woke up yesterday but my ech show remained online.

I rebooted the three dots and my router but all are still offline.

My echo show is online and will play the radio for example but will not provide my flash updates nor run my IoT commands.

I can't figure out the problem. Anybody else with issues since yesterday?

Thanks

gar

I have had issues where i set an alarm or timer on one echo and it goes off on another one. Nearly late getting up for work the other morning if not for 2 walking and talking alarm clocks!!

Cant figure out whats going on.

Corholio

Anybody had a problem with Spotify on the echo? Have Premium and was working fine until today, now Spotify is unlinked and I can't link it cos the Spotify skill pages says unable to due to geographical restrictions. Looking at the Spotify skill review page it seems a lot more people in Ireland are having the same problem too.

wally79

Corholio wrote: »

Anybody had a problem with Spotify on the echo? Have Premium and was working fine until today, now Spotify is unlinked and I can't link it cos the Spotify skill pages says unable to due to geographical restrictions. Looking at the Spotify skill review page it seems a lot more people in Ireland are having the same problem too.

Working as normal here

paulbok

Had my first echo dot (gen 2) die on me last weekend.
We had a power outage during the storm and when it came back, the dot was stuck with a circling blue ring. Checked the cable and it is fine.
I've tried a full reboot by holding down the mic and vol down buttons, but while the light will go off, it just comes on blue circling again.
Have it about 2 years.

Think Primebday is usually the start of July.

This has me worried about other devices as we experience some sort of outage here every 4-6 weeks, scheduled or fault related.

paulbok

Could be worse I suppose, I see the Echo look (baffling device with camera that gave fashion advice), is being discontinued and shut down.

MarkJD

Hey all,


Has anyone got Prime Video with an Echo Show 5 and managed to get it working. Getting geographic run around from Amazon and seems its a blocker but have been using Prime Video for long time with no issues at all but im getting ' Sorry someting went wrong' from the Echo Show 5 when i try open manually or voice command prime video.

368100

MarkJD wrote: »

Hey all,


Has anyone got Prime Video with an Echo Show 5 and managed to get it working. Getting geographic run around from Amazon and seems its a blocker but have been using Prime Video for long time with no issues at all but im getting ' Sorry someting went wrong' from the Echo Show 5 when i try open manually or voice command prime video.

Yep, working for me ok...I have an echo show 8 and it's fine too.
My account is ROI and locations are all ROI.
I have full prime instead of just prime video....don't know if maybe that's the difference? Shouldn't be tho.
I just tried it there by saying "play prime video" and it started greys anatomy.

MarkJD

Thanks for the reply,


So by chance did you make a household at all or all just under one account for you?



Basically bought the echo show 5 for my wife / daughter to be able to play from Prime Video which she has full Amazon Prime under her Amazon account.

I have a standard Echo which is setup under my own account. I was trying to have household account setup which we did and i confirmed the sharing of content etc. Wanted us both to be able to manage the devices from our phones but if it seems with it registered under my account despite us having household prime just wont play.

Had to deregister it but register the show 5 under her amazon account but now we have different devices to manage. Not the worse but will have to do for now.

368100

No I've just got it under one account thankfully.

That household thing sounds like a right malarkey

jogdish

Google home user here, thinking of switching sides can I ask:

Does Echo play RTE radio 1 from RTE (i.e not tuneIn , direct from the source ), has there ever been issues of radio not working ?

Does Echo play BBC podcasts, eg. Alexa play BBC newshour - does that work?

ciaran76

jogdish wrote: »

Google home user here, thinking of switching sides can I ask:

Does Echo play RTE radio 1 from RTE (i.e not tuneIn , direct from the source ), has there ever been issues of radio not working ?

Does Echo play BBC podcasts, eg. Alexa play BBC newshour - does that work?

I think it still uses TuneIn for all that. Mine does anyway.

TCP/IP

jogdish wrote: »

Google home user here, thinking of switching sides can I ask:

Does Echo play RTE radio 1 from RTE (i.e not tuneIn , direct from the source ), has there ever been issues of radio not working ?

Does Echo play BBC podcasts, eg. Alexa play BBC newshour - does that work?

Alexa has dedicated RTÉ skills and can play direct and not via tuneIn if you wish. I have it setup that way and works perfectly every time.

Bummer1234

i sometimes ask alexa to "play 2fm" for example and it says back "now playing (who ever is on) on 2fm", but you can also tell it to play "2fm from tunein" and it says "now playing 2fm on tunein" so one stream direct from rte and other from tunein it appears.

On your bbc question, I don't see a skill on the app for bbc newshour but others here could send you in the right direction, you could bluetooth it from your phone either to the echo.

jogdish

Just after getting my echo, all fine but the ring is flashing yellow all the time - searching tells me its something about unread messages, I asked Alexa to read my messages she says I need to first set it up - looked in the app, no idea what the yellow ring light is trying to tell me.

Needed to ask play my notifications, the notification that the device itself is due for delivery.

Buttros

I get the yellow ring for notifications. So when amazon packages are delivered etc. "Alexa delete all notifications" might get rid of it. I suppose you could play them too. I never do.

scamalert

Buttros wrote: »

I get the yellow ring for notifications. So when amazon packages are delivered etc. "Alexa delete all notifications" might get rid of it. I suppose you could play them too. I never do.

exactly first time ive seen it when it was introduced i thought someone dropped in on me lol, just say alexa play my notifications and it should go away, no need to listen you can say stop at- at above said it picks up amazon deliveries no need to be prime member either, find it handy nowadays as usually once you see it flash yellow means your package will be delivered on the day.

Krombopulos Michael

jogdish wrote: »

Just after getting my echo, all fine but the ring is flashing yellow all the time - searching tells me its something about unread messages, I asked Alexa to read my messages she says I need to first set it up - looked in the app, no idea what the yellow ring light is trying to tell me.

Needed to ask play my notifications, the notification that the device itself is due for delivery.

You can disable delivery notifications via Alexa app which I did.

Muahahaha

Anyone know how to get Alexa to play a specific album on Spotify. eg I say alexa play the Is this it album by the Strokes, then she plays the is this it song only and it goes silent, very frustrating.

Also any way to get it to play your own named playlists in Spotify

368100

Muahahaha wrote: »

Anyone know how to get Alexa to play a specific album on Spotify. eg I say alexa play the Is this it album by the Strokes, then she plays the is this it song only and it goes silent, very frustrating.

Also any way to get it to play your own named playlists in Spotify

I have a playlist called "dance" on spotify.....i just say alexa play my dance playlist and off she goes

Irish Gunner

Echo Auto now available over here

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B078YP59TT/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=shedfund-21&linkId=315ea86bfeaff5d4e9ea2c1b9a445f2c&language=en_GB

Have android auto in car so not going to do any impulsive buying

Some users may want it

Raoul

I've had the Echo Auto a long time. It wasn't officially working in the UK and Ireland though. I don't find it great really. I find that the call quality when going through it isn't very good. That could be due to the bluetooth on my phone, but I don't think so.

Also, maps just don't work. Perhaps now that there is proper support this will work.

It is handy to set reminders though and to play certain songs without flicking through your phone while driving.

Irish Gunner

ILikeBoats wrote: »

Today FM back buffering/stalling every few minutes again

Happening again after few weeks of stability

Dr. Nick

Newstalk not working on Alexa? Was fine until yesterday, alarm set to Newstalk on Tune In (on app - same as always but changed time) but didn't go off (apart from the single ad at the start!)

Doesn't work under normal voice instruction either now.

iba

Hi,

Uptonow, I always used TuneIn radio and I just said Alexa turn on radio.
Now when I say Alexa turn on radio it opens Spotify.
I only have a free Spotify account. I thought Alexa only synced with a premium Spotify account. Has this changed?
Thanks

McMurphy

My Alexa has become unresponsive both yesterday evening, and this morning before work. Switched it off and on at the wall last night and all was good again, but doing it again this morning again.

Say Alexa, it lights up, listens to the command, spins it's lights then says something about having difficulties right now.

It's happened me before, but not with such a short delay between - just wondering if it's happening to anyone else?