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Stella's avatar

This might be incredibly obvious to everyone but i like how with google homes you can get multiple, sync them up and then play music from all of them at once. It's good because i'm always scurrying around from room to room (I'm very scatterbrained heheh) and wanting to listen to music but my phone keeps telling me I'm listening to music too loudly on my headphones. Good for ear health and convenience!

JB

My favourite is definitely that it's linked with our smart heating. I love to just be able to talk to alexa and have my heating and hot water boost turned on, especially convenient as we have 3 echo dots spread around the house--no faffing with boilers or even opening the phone app!

But let's be honest, the real best thing about alexa is the 10 second fart countdown!

Alex Sinclair's avatar

Ha! I did not know about the ten-second countdown, but an old housemate's favourite prank was shouting "Alexa, set an alarm for 4am." through his brother's letterbox

cyruz's avatar

I handle my parents' Amazon account. I'm not a huge fan of these devices myself but my sister gifted my parents an Echo Dot a year ago. My parents mostly use it for order notifications but the little thing has many more uses.

When I know my parents are watching a movie in the evening, I sometimes use the Alexa app to send text messages to the Echo Dot and have Alexa read them out. Of course, we use messaging apps on our phones but I find this way of messaging them really funny. 😂

Their home isn't super automated, so this is admittedly a very simple trick but amusing nonetheless.

Sturmer's avatar

Home automation has been quite the journey for me, starting with IKEA lamps and switches. My initial goal was to gain more control over their bulbs, especially to enable a 'night mode' where the lights dim to 10% power at night in specific areas.

Initially, the IKEA hubs didn't offer this functionality, but I discovered their bulbs and switches are ZigBee devices. So, I set up Home Assistant on my NAS server. Opting for convenience, I chose to build it using Docker. However, I soon learned that the Docker container for Home Assistant couldn't directly communicate with the Zigbee antenna via a virtual USB port. To solve this, I installed an MQTT broker to facilitate signal transmission in both directions.

Then, I faced another hurdle: my antenna didn't support zstack. I had to dismantle it, solder some wires, and flash a different firmware. After overcoming these challenges, I realized that the Home Assistant public blueprints for IKEA switches didn't offer the dimming functionality I wanted. This led me to delve into YAML coding, a language unfamiliar to me. Thanks to ChatGPT, I managed to navigate through issues with punctuation and formatting.

It's been a long and winding road, but now, whenever I embark on a nocturnal 'fridge hunt', I enjoy just the right amount of light. This journey into home automation has not only given me the control I desired but also enriched my understanding of smart home technology.

Alex Sinclair's avatar

The midnight-snack-hunt lighting struggles are real. I love that you've gone to this effort to find a solution.

EveOnlineTutorials's avatar

So, for our home, we have four Alexas. One in the front room, one in the boy's room, and my room and the girl's room.

One thing we do is have an alarm go off at 7 am every morning at full volume so that's quite funny, we are also a family who loves music, at Christmas time, we use them to blare Christmas music out around the house.

The funniest way I use it is when say the little lads are in bed and not going to sleep and I suddenly come through on the Alexa "GO TO SLEEP PUNKS" and you hear giggling.

Alex Sinclair's avatar

I love how many of these entries are just pranks. We've been given tech that's the stuff of sci-fi dreams, and all we use it for is messing with each other.

EveOnlineTutorials's avatar

Pure human nature really, the more we can mess/scare each other without anyone getting hurt, you guarantee we are going to do it.

Lanah Tyra's avatar

No submission just a thought on the matter:

I really wanted to try and use my Alexa in the soundbar which came with my tablet, but most of the time it doesn't understand my Hunglish so I gave up on it. I wish these things were designed to respond to different accents / languages. I'm sure that can't be such a big deal with what AI can do these days.

Alex Sinclair's avatar

Very true. My Scottish friend really struggles with Alexas and doesn't much enjoy having to put on an English accent to be understood.

Lanah Tyra's avatar

This one is golden:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYvFxs32zvQ

We went to a tech exhibition with my colleagues in Scotland when I lived up there and were having a fun time trying to get Alexa understand us... we all failed apart from the Glaswegian lady who worked 40 years in theatre in York.

Nicole's avatar

This is so good - Alexa being Alexa, a Glaswegian being Glaswegian, that "English" accent and better still, she knows its going to be terrible before she does it 😂

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