Alexa now talking in her sleep!

[mike27oct]

That's right; in a completely quiet home and without ANY audio stimulation to awaken Alexa, it now occasionally just blurts out a nonsense sentence or two.  No one at this forum has reported this before.  It started here late last night. 

Alexa lives on a living room end table on our first floor.  I heard her say something while we were getting ready for bed when I said something to wife in our upstairs bedroom.  I was surprised that Alexa even heard me, or anything else, to get her talking. Nevertheless, I figured she heard me, or something else, and I ignored it. 

Over an hour later, I am upstairs on PC at desk in open hallway overlooking living room.  Absolute and total silence in house for over an hour.  Suddenly, I heard a woman's voice, think it is my wife who is asleep, but it is Alexa again!  She said a sentence or two, but I could not understand the words, because Alexa was at a low volume level.  I rebooted Echo by power off/on method.  All seemed OK, but I turned down volume even lower so she could not awaken us if she did it again overnight.

In the morning, I had Alexa play a TuneIn radio station.  Within 15 minutes or so she said something again while music was playing and which made it even more difficult to understand what it said.

I think at this point that maybe a first-time total Echo reset is in order, but before I do so, I call Echo support, get the first guy in India who screens my call and forwards me to a main support center in Virginia.  The guy is as baffled as I am about what the cause could be.  He found nothing in his database of issues even closely related to this.  He said he would forward the case to the technical dept. so they can explore any logs that could give a clue.  We both agreed a reset might help. but we decided I would wait a few hours for the tech folks to gather the logs and also see if Alexa acts up again anytime soon.

To be continued. . .

[renegade600]

did you check your log to see what alexa heard before talking?  Any chance your house is haunted  :-)

[mike27oct]

Yes, I checked app Home page, nothing.  She did not report she heard anything, and when I asked her to repeat what she said, she said there is nothing to repeat.  Haunted?  Maybe.

Anyway, after having three of these incidents, (last one yesterday morning) all was silent throughout yesterday while we continued to use the Echo.  Yep, these incidents really blew the Amazon Support guy's mind (and mine, too.)  It is being checked on, but no feedback yet from AMZ.

Also, I have not hit the Echo reset button -- yet.

[renegade600]

Yes, I checked app Home page, nothing.  She did not report she heard anything, and when I asked her to repeat what she said, she said there is nothing to repeat.  Haunted?  Maybe.

Anyway, after having three of these incidents, (last one yesterday morning) all was silent throughout yesterday while we continued to use the Echo.  Yep, these incidents really blew the Amazon Support guy's mind (and mine, too.)  It is being checked on, but no feedback yet from AMZ.

Also, I have not hit the Echo reset button -- yet.

It would not be on the home page, it would be in settings - history. 

[mike27oct]

Actually it is on both.  On Home page you see what Alexa responded, in History I can see my questions and listen to them.  Anyway, no tracks were left.  Both I and Echo support confirmed this.

[jwlv]

Certain commands and responses are not always shown in the Alexa Echo App.
For example, I'm listening to KXNT talk radio (streaming from I Heart Radio).
I asked, "Alexa, what is this?"
Alexa replied, "This is news and talk radio 840 AM."
But neither my question or the response is shown in the App.

I asked, "Alexa, what time is it?"
Alexa replied, "It's 2:20."
Neither question or answer are shown in the App.

[mike27oct]

Nothing shows either if we did not trigger Alexa and cause her to talk in her sleep.  Amazon asked me to send them the script of the log of when this happened, which I did.

[shastapoke]

Last night our Alexa made a couple of tones.  We had not asked for anything.  Today, she blurted out something about 2-pck shakur (sp?].  Again, we had not asked any questions.  Also we have finally learned not to say "Alexa" when we are not speaking to her.  Pretty sure our house is not haunted, too.  Seems very weird that sounds come from Alexa without any input by us.

[mike27oct]

Your comment reminds me that I never told you folks here that after a couple of weeks, I figured out what caused Alexa to talk in her sleep.  Would you believe "user error"?!

I was sitting nearby Alexa about 10 days ago when Alexa did it again, and this time I understood enough of what it said that first time and could tell this time it said the name of my PC, and it was because I had just turned on the PC Bluetooth. 

Apparently, I had left the PC Bluetooth connected to Alexa accidently a couple of weeks before.  The funny thing is, I had turned it on BT the day before to help a forum member who was having trouble with Alexa, because it kept wanting to connect to his PC's Bluetooth and was talking.  I helped him get it fixed (turn off PC Bluetooth), but I had also caused the same problem to myself. 

Reason my BT was not turned off for a few days is that my PC is mostly never turned off; I keep it in sleep mode overnight or away from house a few hours and reboot occasionally.  So, when I awoke my PC from sleep, it also awoke Alexa, too.

OK, ya'll got that?  It was caused by my accidentally leaving the PC's BT on, but not using it.

This likely was your problem, too.  We all have to be more aware of BT signals triggering Alexa when we don't want it too.  So, go around and turn off or un-pair all BT devices on phones and tablets, etc.  I recently discovered a way to turn them all off at once in the Echo's settings.  Go into the settings of (yourname) Echo, go to the Bluetooth section in there and find the button to un-pair all BT devices at once. That will kill the culprit if you could not find it.  Next time you go to use a BT device you will need to pair each one you use.

Whew, glad that mystery was finally solved.

Mostly, just remember to turn off BT on a device after you finish using it with Alexa.

[shastapoke]

I do have blue tooth for a few things such as a speaker to my tablet, but the power to the speaker is turned off.  I haven't touched any blue tooth stuff for weeks.  One thing we do have is pairing of our cell phones to the base unit of our home phone system.  We won't be turning that off though or we won't receive calls in the various rooms of our house.  We do not have a landline so we leave our cell phones on most of the time while they are on their chargers.  I don't see the Echo as a serious problem since it's only made noises a couple of times.  I don't have any current plans to use blue tooth with Echo.  Oh yeah, I do have a blue tooth dongle on my pc.  Not sure if that's a problem or not.

[mike27oct]

OK, to minimize Alexa talking unexpectedly, Un-pair all BT devices from Alexa in case any are paired) by using Alexa app Settings as I described.  This does not affect your phones, only Alexa.  If you later pair your phones to Alexa, just un-pair them again when done. Do this by telling phone to forget the Alexa BT connection.

[shastapoke]

On it.  thanks, Mike.

[ASK]

Last night, in the middle of the night, I was awakened by a voice in my house.  This had happened before.  I am single and no talking dogs, so I got up and walked into the living room. I had suspected it was Siri having insomnia and luckily she made a second comment.  I checked and she was linked to my IPAD Bluetooth so I unlinked that and went to bed.  This morning I discovered Amazon Echo Forum and learned that others had found that disabling Bluetooth connections to Echo had worked.  Hope it does for me.  Interestingly, I wear two hearing aids and they have Bluetooth. Thus I listen to music and audible books through my hearing aids.  Pretty neat. But haven't hooked them up to Echo though I have a Radio Shack gizmo that allows me to hook my Samsung Smart TV up to my hearing aids Bluetooth.  I only mention this because I probably use Bluetooth around the house a lot more than most people.  I just hope Echo can't pair with Bluetooth unless I ask it to!

[mike27oct]

>>>  I just hope Echo can't pair with Bluetooth unless I ask it to!

It won't, if you follow the step to un-pair devices from all things you do not want it paired with unless you really want it to), including Echo. 

A talking (all by itself, sort of) iPad, too.  Funny.  Hasn't happened to me yet, but now I am forewarned.

Bluetooth is quickly becoming one of the most bothersome "house pests" of our digital age!

[jwlv]

Perhaps I'll coin the phrase "dangling bluetooth" meaning those bluetooth connections that we forgot about but still connects on its own from time to time.

>>>  I just hope Echo can't pair with Bluetooth unless I ask it to!

It won't, if you follow the step to un-pair devices from all things you do not want it paired with unless you really want it to), including Echo. 

A talking (all by itself, sort of) iPad, too.  Funny.  Hasn't happened to me yet, but now I am forewarned.

Bluetooth is quickly becoming one of the most bothersome "house pests" of our digital age!