Amazon Dot: My Newest remote...

[nicoff]

I connected Amazon Dot to my music system and I am using it as a voice-activated remote to play music from Spotify. I can just tell it to play whatever music I want from Spotify and it automatically plays it.
It also works with my Harmony hub (using ITFFF skills) to perform activities that have already been programmed in Harmony (such as listening to music).
So I can literally turn the music system on and play any song from Spotify via voice commands. It works great.

[ajdo]

Amazon Dot sounds interesting. I like functional gadgets ! Have harmony remote as well, will look into ITFFF skills.
Thx for sharing

[ajdo]

Just realized the Dot may not work for me after all. I have a French accent and all the voice recognition gadgets I have tried, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana and others just don't work Even tried Amazon Alexa at a friend's office which failed miserably to understand anything coming out of my mouth, trying to just schedule a simple appointment was impossible and exhausting. Will have to wait another 10 years for technology to ripen

[nicoff]

Originally Posted by ajdo

Just realized the Dot may not work for me after all. I have a French accent and all the voice recognition gadgets I have tried, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana and others just don't work Even tried Amazon Alexa at a friend's office which failed miserably to understand anything coming out of my mouth, trying to just schedule a simple appointment was impossible and exhausting. Will have to wait another 10 years for technology to ripen

Amazon Echo has a training mode where you are asked to read certain phrases which allows the Echo to understand you. Not sure if that will be sufficient, but just a thought. The voice recognition in the Echo is excellent and, in my opinion, better than Siri and Google.

[ajdo]

Originally Posted by nicoff

Amazon Echo has a training mode where you are asked to read certain phrases which allows the Echo to understand you. Not sure if that will be sufficient, but just a thought. The voice recognition in the Echo is excellent and, in my opinion, better than Siri and Google.

Thx for input, will order and try it. I agree, maybe the Alexa I tried was not setup for my voice. Can always send it back if voice recognition does not work. Love practical gadget that work, it simplifies life. Really enjoyed IBM's Watson but can't really afford it

[nicoff]

An update: Harmony and the Amazon Echo now work with each other directly without the need for IFTTT skills. The change increases the number of commands that can be performed.

When listening to Spotify, the (analog) sound quality of the Echo Dot is not great. So for better sound choose another device (with better internal DAC) to listen to Spotify.