Ok, I need to see if this Amazon Echo is worth keeping for my handicapped son. He is 20 and cannot use a remote control. He has to yell for someone else to come change the channel or switch boxes or apps. We want him to be self sufficient. The idea of him being able to turn on and off his nightstand light is great. But not the primary purpose in his world.
If controlling the FireTV directly was your primary reason for getting an Echo and you have little use for its other functions, then I would advise you to return it because the functionality you want just does not exist yet. You can always purchase later if it does come down the road.
As I and others have mentioned, adding a Harmony Hub to your home theater system may help your son to do some things, but he will not be completely independent. Harmony activities that you configure can be triggered using the Echo, but simple button presses cannot. I have tried creating activities to represent button presses, but that is not without its own problems. That functionality is just not supported and while you may be able to kludge your way around it, it is not an elegant solution. However, that support may come down the road.
Blumoo may be a product that can do more for you. It doesn't work directly with the FireTV because Blumoo uses IR (as I understand it) and FireTV uses Bluetooth (1st gen) or WiFi (2nd gen). There is some sort of USB converter dongle that you can attach to the USB port of a FireTV that will allow it to receive IR signals, however, and I have been told Blumoo will work with the FireTV if you have this dongle. The FireStick does not have any USB ports, so it will not work with the FireStick. Roku uses IR remotes, so it will work with Roku.
Blumoo is a smart phone/tablet controlled universal remote that appears to be compatible with the Echo. It is not for me because I need to have a physical remote in addition to Echo or a smart phone (and I don't have the dongle for my FireTV). But your son has no use for a physical remote, so it may work well for him. I honestly do not know its limitations and I don't know if it would be able to do everything you need, but it could be something for you to look into.
This is the video that I saw that demonstrated its use with the Echo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gef38RoT_JI This is the product on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Blumoo-Universal-Bluetooth-Streaming-Android/dp/B00JEMMD9Q/ref=cm_cd_al_qh_dp_tI think this may be the dongle that you would need, but check with Blumoo for verification:
http://www.amazon.com/FLIRC-FL-09028-Universal-Receiver-Components/dp/B00BB0ETW8/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&srs=12034488011&ie=UTF8&qid=1462302581&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=fire+tv+ir+remote1. I tried all three names, Echo, Amazon and Alexa. The Echo trigger word has only triggered twice after 200 tries in the last week and we completed the Training Session 5 times now. My son will scream it, whisper it, say it long and slow, say it fast, try a lower voice and a higher pitch voice. Only 2 times did the Echo trigger for my son. The funny thing is, he played the Roleplaying game kinda like ZORK. Called "The Magic Door". Echo described the scene and my son answers it correctly 90% of the time. He beat the game. Its the Trigger words that do not work.
As others have said, this sounds like a defect in your unit. No one in my house has any problems triggering the wake-up word - even kids yelling with their mouths full from across the room. I would definitely talk to Amazon support about this.
2. Since Echo cannot control the the Fire TV box. So what's the point?
Well, if that is all you wanted it for, then for you, there is none. However, that was not what it was marketed for. Everyone uses their Echo differently. I use it to get the weather in the morning, to find out when the Cubs play or what the score is if I am missing the game, to find out how to spell a word correctly or to define a word I don't know, to ask who a certain person is, to Wikipedia things without going to a computer, to turn my lights on and off when my hands are full, to set alarms and timers so I am always on time to pick up my kids from their many events and so I don't burn dinner because I couldn't hear the oven timer from the other room, to remind me what is on my calendar for the day/week and add events to my calendar, to manage my shopping list and create todo lists, among other things. Some people use it as a speaker to play music from Prime or their music library or Pandora or to listen to radio stations on TuneIn. My husband used it to listen to the football draft on ESPN radio (we don't get cable). My kids ask it funny questions hoping for funny answers. Their are skills for ordering an Uber or ordering a pizza or ordering flowers. You can order items from Amazon. You can listen to Audible audio books or have it use text to speech to read ebooks to you. You can use the TVShows skill to find out when a specific show is on and on what channel. You can play trivia games like Jeopardy. You can get news, traffic, and sports updates. You can listen to podcasts.
Basically, there are a ton of things you can do with the device. But if you only need it to control your TV, then it probably doesn't do much for you at this time. But new features get added every week and you never know what it will be doing tomorrow.
3. I was told in this thread that ""Trigger Watch TV" and it will turn on all the needed devices". To us that is of no use. All the devices are on 24/7. We just change Inputs on the Sony Smart TV.
We have:
Sony Smart TV
Fire TV box
Cox Cable Contour box ( its an HD cable box with 6 built in DVR's and 2 TB HD space.)
PlayStation 4 to watch Netflix, Hulu and Youtube and play games for my other son.
The "Trigger Watch TV" was just an example of a Harmony Hub activity being triggered by the Echo using IFTTT. Before it can do this, you need a Harmony Hub, you need to create an activity to do what you want, and you need to create an IFTTT recipe to trigger that activity. You can create such activities to switch between all of the devices you have (eg, Watch Cable TV, Watch Fire TV, Play PlayStation), but like I said before, it would be hard to completely control all of these devices by voice alone. The advantage would be that you wouldn't need all these devices to be on all the time and you could probably save a bit of electricity that way. But perhaps the Blumoo remote may get you closer, but you would need to research that more.
28 Replies
84434 Views