Amazon Tap (Echo Dot) in the car

[jwlv]

The Amazon Tap is meant to be portable and used outside the home just as shown in their promo video. The Echo Dot conceivably can be powered by your car's 12-volt battery. Both can be tethered by your smartphone's wifi hotspot. If it can work like this, I would love to have an Echo device in the car. Whatever I'm thinking of while driving, I can just ask Alexa. But what about connected home devices? Obviously you won't be on the same network at your home. Will I be able to ask Alexa to turn on/off the lights in my house while driving about? Wemo's app can be used anywhere there is an internet connection; It doesn't have to be on the same network (except when setting it up the first time). Can Echo control devices outside of its home network?

[kilofox]

From a security point of view... I would certainly hope not.

[kevb]

I would guess that you can do this via IFTTT. I think there's a lag of up to 15 minutes with WEMO though.

[mike27oct]

>>>  Can Echo control devices outside of its home network?

Absolutely!  I have done it already. Your Alexa app is tied to your Amazon user account, so there is no security risk, either.  No one can get onto your Amazon Echo account unless they have an Alexa app containing your Amazon account name and password (as my wife does).  Best of all, you can test this with your current Echo, so no need to be in a car to test, either.

What I did was shortly after getting the Echo, I was walking to our neighborhood mailboxes when I thought I would use Alexa app to have Echo turn on and play a TuneIn radio station in my Alexa list of Favorites and startle my wife who was in living room reading the paper or something.  Being a Comcast customer, I connected my phone Wi-Fi to the free xfinitywifi signal Comcast customers can use;  xfinititywifi is all throughout my neighborhood.  I turned on Alexa app and turned on Echo before getting back in the house.  The Echo was playing the radio, and my wife was completely baffled and startled by what had just happened. I told her how it happened.  Turning YuneIn off was not possible without asking Alexa to turn it off, but the app enabled me to pause the radio which accomplished the same thing.

So, try this at home.  Connect your present Echo to another Wi-Fi signal as I did, or tether it to your phone's hotspot or data plan.  Now, your Echo is on a different network, and tell Alexa via app to do something while you are standing next to it.  It will do it.  Undoing actions is not as easy (like turning off TuneIn through the app), so I need to put in a suggestion to Amazon that there be a way through the app to tell Alexa, STOP.)

So, give this a try and experiment with what you can and cannot do this way.

If you like this Echo idea, you will probably like this one: 
Within the past few days, at the WD User Forum which I am a member of, I posted complete instructions on how to easily make your own homemade "wireless drive" that can be used (for example,) in car and elsewhere to stream videos to the kids' tablets when they are in the back seat!
I actually have a WD wireless drive, but this is a way to make one if you don't have one.

Here is the link to that post (Just like here, you don't need to be a forum member to read the posts.): 

https://community.wd.com/t/easily-make-your-own-wireless-drive/154596

Have fun!

[kilofox]

>>>  Can Echo control devices outside of its home network?

Absolutely!  I have done it already. Your Alexa app is tied to your Amazon user account, so there is no security risk, either.

I am not worried about the app on the phone. I was talking about the Tap itself. If you leave your Tap somewhere, I believe they can give it commands that would effect your home if it can hop on a network. Lights on/off etc etc.

I suppose, Connected Home Setting is probably not best used on the Tap.   

[mike27oct]

Nope, think this through a little more. 

Anyone can talk to the Tap all they want to, even tell it to destroy the world, but unless the Tap is connected to a Wi-Fi network, nothing can happen without my app to do the connecting to a network.  Unless, for example, I leave it on our neighborhood picnic table in the park, and had it connected to the xfinitywifi signal, and come home without the Tap.  So yes, the Alexa inside can still do things.  Say I left it cross town or even in another city on-network.  In that case, there is a way to unregister the thing and make it inactive, even if that means I need to call Amazon support to do this.  So, don't leave it on-network unnecessarily, and don't forget to take it back home with you!