Multiple Echo's in one house

[chadbaldwin]

I only plan on having a single Amazon account set up with them. I only have one right now, but I'm moving soon and want to have one upstairs and one downstairs in the new house.

I'm just curious how well they work together?

Do they communicate with each other?

For example, if both Echo's are within earshot of each other and I say "Alexa" will they both trigger? Or are they smart enough to communicate with each other, determine which one had is closer to the person, and then the further one ignores the command.

Are the things that are set up and stored on the Echo's stored by account or by Echo?

Examples:

• If I set an alarm or timer, does is sound on the one that received the command, or all Echo's on the account? (in the future it would be nice to have the option to specify if the alarm/timer sounds on one or all, if I set a timer in the kitchen while cooking, would be nice to have it also sound on the one upstairs as well. But at the same time, I only want my morning alarm to sound on the Echo in my room)
• If I add something to a shopping list or a todo list, will it go to both of them? (Preferred action would be to sync across both of them)
• If I install a skill on one Echo, does it get installed on all the other Echo's? (Preferred action would be to sync across both of them)
• Will all of my smart home items get synced across all Echo's? (Preferred action, all items get synced across both Echo's, but not the groups)
• Will my custom connected home device groups in the Alexa app get synced or stay on the one device? (Preferred action would be that the groups don't get synced. I would like to set up a generic "lights" group, and configure which lights are in that group based on which room the Echo is in. For the Echo in my room, I have the bedroom lights in the "lights" group. For the Echo in the Kitchen, I would have the kitchen lights in the "lights" group.

[renegade600]

I am going to do some assuming since I only have one echo.  I am pretty sure someone will correct me if I am wrong - right Mike  :-) 

 You do not install anything on the echo.  Everything is installed in the cloud under one account.  All of them will have access to the same information like your todo and shopping lists, smarthome devices, skills etc, but will work individually when it comes to alarms, timers, streaming, running skills...  You can have some confusion if you have two close enough where they both can hear you.  To prevent this confusion, it would be best to name each differently though at this time there are only three that will work - Amazon, Echo, and Alexa. 

[chadbaldwin]

Yeah, I'm basically making the same assumptions. That's how I would expect it to work...however, that's not always how things go. lol.

I'm hoping they've put in at least a little development to support this sort of stuff.

They should start up an idea board like a lot of start up companies are doing, where users can suggest ideas, and then those ideas get voted on.

Would love to see some of those ideas I suggested be put into play at some point in time.

[mike27oct]

>>>   someone will correct me if I am wrong - right Mike  :-) 

You are always right, (unless you get it wrong).  You know that! 

Chad, I would add that I have a 2-story house, and we get by with having one Echo since our home is open enough that talking to Echo from our long, half-open side of hallway above is not a problem.  So, unless your up and down areas are more separated, you might want to live in your new house a while with one Echo and see how it works for you.  You'll know fairly soon if you need another.

[Ultramanv]

This being said,,,they now have the Dot for pre-order . I was almost always able to get my echo to hear me from upstairs but if the music was loud or tv was on sometimes it took about 4 tries, But i see the dot is now available so i ordered one. Not as expensive as the echo but Will be perfect for a second unit where i don't care about her speakers

[linuxman]

I just did same - grabbed two Dots for pre-order (late March release it looks like?) to go along with my regular Echo.   From what I can tell from the specs they are independent units - they don't stream via the main Echo.  I'd sort of like to have them be able to slave off of the main unit (acting like a whole home speaker system).   That way, you've only got one audio stream coming down from the Internet, instead of multiple (my connection is a bit slow).  Should be interesting.

[Maff]

I have two echos. If you add something to your shopping list I think it will go to one central list. If you set an alarm it will just sound on the echo you set it on. Spotify will only work with one echo at a time, although you can go from one to the other & say "resume" and the music will instantly flick without gap to that echo. You can listen to different music sevices on different echos on the same account at once, although I have just tried this with Spotify & TuneIn so far. Skills are enabled via account rather than an individual echo, so you install a skill & it works on all your echos. Same with smart home stuff,it will all work with both echo devices.

In terms of the wake word, yes, if you say alexa within earshot of both they will both answer. But you can change a name to "echo" or "Amazon"  (yuck) on one device, so you can just call them different names.

If you have an echo remote, you can only pair it with one echo.

Any other questions? I can always try something on request & give you an answer!

[chadbaldwin]

@Maff, AWESOME! Thanks for the response.

They really need to work on developing a method for handling multiple Alexa's in one home. I just keep saying over and over, I feel like it wouldn't be that hard (for Amazon) to develop a way of having the Echo's communicate with each other on the local network to determine "who heard you better". If I'm 30 feet away from one echo, and 10 feet away from the other, and I'm facing the one that's 10 feet away...they would both wake, but I'm sure if you listened tot he recordings, it would be pretty obvious which one I was trying to talk too?

Though I'm sure when there's interference it would get skewed...like if I were trying to talk to the 10ft echo, but it's playing music. But even still, I feel like there are ways to figure that out.

In the new house I'm not sure I'll have too many problems with them overhearing...as there would be one in the garage, one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen, all of those fairly isolated...but if I ever get more in the future...who knows.

And yeah, I already ordered my Dot Just one for now for testing.