- Maybe you're thinking
about getting an Echo,
or you have one and you wanna
know what you can do with it.
Here are 10 Echo in Alexa everyday uses.
Hello tech friends, welcome back.
If you're new here, my name is Craig.
I love playing with tech and
seeing what it can do for us.
That sounds like something
you're into stick around.
This is week 48 of my 2019 Echo series.
I did a top 10 everyday uses
last year and the year before.
That's why this one is 3.0.
Maybe you're new to the Amazon Echo's,
and this will give you some idea of uses.
Maybe you're seasoned Echo pro.
This video will go over the
updates over the past year.
Let's get started with the top 10.
Stay tuned to the end,
I'm gonna throw in a bonus
feature for this year.
One that I think is an
interesting use for your Echos.
Number one are two of the most
used functions for my family.
They are timers and alarms.
Both have been updated over the past year.
Did you know that you
can set multiple timers
and name each one of them?
Then when a timer goes off,
it'll tell you which timer it is.
This is great if you're
trying to keep track
of multiple things.
Alexa set a pasta timer for five seconds.
- [Alexa] Pasta timer
five seconds starting now.
- Alexa set a reading
timer for 10 minutes.
- [Alexa] Reading timer
10 minutes starting now.
(beeping sound)
- There's my pasta timer let me know.
- [Alexa] Your pasta timer is done.
- Alexa stop, I could check
on my timer by asking,
"Alexa how much time is
left on my reading timer?"
- [Alexa] About nine
minutes and 20 seconds left.
I think that's a very handy feature.
I love that you can name each one
especially if you start stacking timers
on top of each other.
Now the alarms are great with this,
you can set them through
the app or your voice.
You can have it wake you
with a basic alarm sound,
or you can pick a genre
music, a song or an artist.
But my favorite addition
to alarms this year
is triggering the routine
when the alarm goes off.
Basically a routine is a series
of steps that your Echo would do.
Let's set an alarm for one
minute and see a trigger routine.
Alexa set an alarm for 10:46 a.m.
(beeping sound)
So there's the alarm
going off, "Alexa stop."
- [Alexa] Good morning,
have a wonderful day.
Today, there are two events remaining,
at 2:00 p.m. there's Madison
parent teacher conference
and at 3:30 p.m. there's horseback riding.
- So that was a little three step
where it said something
changed the color of my light,
and then told me what's
going on with my calendar.
Number two is one of the
best uses for an Echo,
it is smart home control.
For years you've been able
to control smart lights,
smart plugs, switches,
thermostats, cameras,
and so much more.
Last year, Amazon made it
easier to control your devices
with the addition of groups.
You can combine all of your
lights and smart devices
in a room with an Echo into a group.
My favorite updates this year
is being able to just say,
"Alexa turn off the lights."
The Echo in the group knows
to only turn on or off
the lights it is grouped with.
"Alexa turn on light."
No more having to remember
the name of each light,
or the name of the group
that is a game changer,
especially with my wife
who did not know the name of every light
or group in the house.
Now, we can go from room to room and say,
"Turn on or off lights
with the same command."
I've done the same thing with
smart switches in my kitchen.
It just lights on and
the two switches trigger.
This has been one of the best upgrades
for smart home control.
Number three is music.
The Echos are great for listening to music
in whatever room you're in.
You can even combine them
and listen to multiple
rooms at the same time.
With the Amazon Echos you
can listen to Amazon music,
Apple Music, Spotify,
Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn,
Sirius XM, Tidal, Amazon
HD music and more.
I was really excited that Apple Music
came to the Echo's last December.
I know it's not available in all countries
and I'm sorry to hear that.
That is a bummer.
But there are the other music options.
These options are great,
you're able to just ask for
an artist genre music or song.
With Amazon music,
you can even create
playlists with your voice
and add songs to it by
saying, "Add the song
to the name of the list."
With other services you
could access your playlist
that you've created through their app.
I set up mine up so Apple
Music is the default service
so I can say, "Alexa
play classical playlist."
- [Alexa] Classical from
Craig's Apple Music.
(classic music)
- Good to go.
Number four build on the music option
with multi room audio speaker groups.
For a little while now
you've been able to create
speaker groups of Echos,
for example, I can have an upstairs group,
a downstairs group or an everywhere group.
This past year, Amazon added the option
to add your fireTV Sticks
or fireTV cubes into a group
for multi room audio,
"Alexa play classical
music on office speakers."
- [Alexa] Got it, here's
the station you might like
ultimate classical on Amazon music.
(classical music)
- Now it's coming out of
my office show five here,
it's on the TV.
It's telling me what's playing.
There's a dot behind me,
now you get music coming out of your TV.
This is a great addition if
you have a nice sound system
that you use with your fireTV.
Number five is one of the
favorites from last year's list.
It is still a great tool.
It's great for talking to
someone in another room,
or even from outside the house.
It is drop-in.
Drop-in is like an intercom
system for your Echos.
You can take drop-in on the
name of an Echo in your house
and you'll be connected
right to that Echo.
You can even use the Alexa app,
or Echo auto to drop in when
you're outside of the house.
"Alexa drop in on the kitchen."
- [Alexa] Okay, dropping in.
You can see a green light to let you know.
Hello.
- [Alexa] Hello.
- Hey, how's it going?
- [Alexa] Hi, good what you doing?
- I'm recording a video
demonstrating drop-in.
- [Alexa] Oh, hi everyone.
- Okay, Alexa hang up.
Number six is great for keeping track
your day with calendars.
You can connect Google,
Microsoft, Microsoft Exchange
or Apple calendar accounts to your Echo.
You can choose what
calendars you wanna have sync
up to your Echo.
You can also choose what calendars
you wanna add events to with your voice,
"Alexa add dinner to my
calendar at 6:00 p.m. tonight."
- [Alexa] "I'll schedule dinner
today at 6:00 p.m., okay?"
- Yes
- [Alexa] "Okay, I've added that."
- If you have an Echo show,
you can set it up so that
you can see your calendars.
And it'll tell you what's coming up next.
If I wanna hear what my events
are for the day, I can say,
"Alexa what's on my calendar?"
- [Alexa] Here are the next four events:
Today at 2:00 p.m.
there's Madison parent teacher conference,
at 3:30 p.m. there's horseback riding,
at 6:00 p.m., there's dinner,
- You could see it added my
dinner right to the calendar.
Number seven is reminders and list.
With your Echo, you could
set reminders for yourself
or others, for example,
"Alexa remind me in 30 seconds
to continue talking about reminders."
- [Alexa] "Okay, I'll
remind you in 30 seconds."
- You can choose in the app
to also send that reminder
to your phone when it does go off.
Or you could turn on the
miss reminders notification.
So if you're away from
your Echo, a yellow light
will stay on to give you a
visual to check your reminder.
(beeping sound)
- [Alexa] "Here's your reminder,
continue talking about reminders."
(beeping sound)
- And here it showed up
on my phone that says,
"Continue to talk about reminders."
With list you can create
lists and add items to it
using your voice.
There is even the option
to add multiple things
at the same time.
For example, I could say,
"Alexa add milk, cheese and
avocado to my trip list."
- [Alexa] I couldn't
find a list called trip,
should I create one?
- Yes,
- [Alexa] I have created
trip list and added milk,
cheese and avocado to it.
- Now if I go into the app,
I can go to list and I
have a list called trip.
And there's now avocado,
cheese and milk on it.
Number eight is one of my favorites.
It is routines.
Routines allow you to
create a series of steps
that can be triggered by
voice at a specific time
by select smart devices,
a location, an alarm or
an Alexa gadget or even Alexa guard.
With routines, you pick what's
gonna trigger that routine,
and then you pick the
actions that go with it.
The actions include
Alexa saying something,
reading your calendar off,
change some device settings,
have your Google or
Microsoft email read to you,
send a message from the Alexa
app to other Alexa users.
Play music, give you news
flash briefing, trigger skills,
trigger smart devices, traffic
wait times, or weather.
The wait option may need
more of an explanation.
Basically, you could
put waits between steps.
Maybe you wanna have emotion
center trigger lights on
in one step, and then you wait 10 minutes
and then in the next
step, it turns them off,
or you wanna delay some
other step in your routine.
Maybe you have the lights
downstairs, wait 10 minutes
after you dismiss your alarm.
The fact that you can trigger a routine
by using an alarm like I showed earlier,
it's really impressive.
There really are so many
options with routines.
Here's one that I made,
"Alexa I'm back."
- [Alexa] Well, hello. I'm
very happy you're here.
(cheers)
- A cheers for me.
And now set the device volume.
(low music)
It's playing a low music for me.
You may not have noticed,
it also triggered a scene that changed
the color of my lights to all blue.
Number nine is books,
audio books and podcasts.
With your Echo and Alexa
you can ask for podcasts
and it will search the available services
such as iHeartRadio, or TuneIn
for the podcast you want.
"Alexa play the Joe Rogan experience."
- [Alexa] Here's the Joe Rogan experience
from TuneIn number 1389 Chris Kresser.
- [Presenter] Hello friends,
this episode of the pod...
- One of the things I love is that
I can listen to my audio books
from any of the Echo devices,
"Alexa play my audible book."
- [Man Voice] Is the
easiest to rationalize.
We don't tell our...
- When I asked for my audio book,
it's gonna just pick up
from where I left off on the audible app.
You can also have Alexa
read you your kindle books,
"Alexa read my book, the Hit."
- [Alexa] Resuming Craig's book, the Hit
will Roby book two, Come
and Caught Vance Off Guard.
She sat back her posture, relax.
- Now it's gonna be read
to you in Alexa voice,
so if you're okay with that,
it does give you an audio version
Number 10 is calling.
When you set up the Echo,
you can get permission to the Alexa app
to use your contacts.
So if you get permission
to use your contacts,
you can make calls from your Echo.
If you set up a voice
profile, it'll know your voice
and contacts when you
ask to call your mom.
As opposed to your spouse's mom.
You can also make a call
by saying the numbers in a phone number.
So if you wanna call a business,
you can just say the numbers.
Another great calling option is Skype.
You can use Skype to
contact other Skype users
through their Skype app, or their Echo.
If you're using something
like the Echo show,
you can do voice and video.
Now the bonus number 11 everyday use
that can give you a
little extra peace of mind
is Alexa guard.
When Alexa guard is activated,
your Echos will listen for
the sounds of smoke alarms,
or CO alarms going off.
It will also listen for the
sound of glass breaking.
If any of those things
happen an alert will be sent
to your phone, Alexa guard
can also give your house
that lived in looked by
turning on or off rooms
at random times after sunset.
It uses your zip code to
determine when sunset is,
you can pick which lights
you wanna use with guard,
and now when you are met
anyone who's up to no good
won't know if you're home
because they'll see lights
come on at random times.
Another cool addition with Alexa guard,
is you can use it to trigger routines.
It can turn off all the
lights except for a couple
in the house and all the
devices when you leave
and turn on Alexa guard
then when you disarm Alexa guard,
it can turn on other lights in the house
and start another routine.
This is one of those
features that are creative
and an interesting addition to the Echos.
This is the stuff I
like to see Amazon make.
That's it, 10 great everyday
uses for the Echo and Alexa.
What's your favorite use for your Echos?
Let us know in the comments section.
Next, make sure to check
out this video over here
to learn about the Echo
Flex and what it can do.
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Thanks for watching and have a great day.
Bye.
