We have had our Echo for a little under a year. We have it incorporated into our new home, which has several smart features, using a Smartthings hub and other devices. We tied in Alexa thinking this would provide voice control, but it is failing.
One issue is that Alexa routines can't seem to recognize various common spellings of common names. For example, if I use my wife's name, "Kelley", it won't recognize it. But if I spell it "Kelly", it works. I have also found it won't recognize the name Jenny when typed into a routine. Minor issues, but annoying.
Another is how having more than one Smartthings device with even a remotely similar name, or items that share one word of their name, confuses it. We have only one item named "basement lights", but because we also have a "basement door" (lock), we can't turn lights on or off using Alexa, because it responds "A few things share that name. Which one did you want?" The same goes for "kitchen recessed" (kitchen lights), because I just added a motion sensor for those night time visits to the kitchen, and named the sensor "kitchen sensor". Asking Alexa "Turn on kitchen lights" gets "A few things share that name. Which one did you want?"
We also can't control our Logitech Harmony Hub. I have tried setting up routines step by step to perform actions like playing a TV program on our Roku. Unfortunately the only thing Alexa can do is turn the TV on and off. Pretty much any other actions fail (can't do multiple step functions).
And unrelated, when we purchased our Alexa, it advertised being able to play music anywhere. We bought a Dot to go with it, for the bedroom, only to find out our unlimited Prime music only works in one room, and we have to purchase separate subscriptions for each room. That is quite the con. After spending several hundred dollars in devices (kitchen, bedroom, basement, loft, office), and a high price for Prime, we have to spend even more to use our Prime music in more than one room!
We are curious if others have similar issues. We are trying to embrace Alexa, but for now, she's more annoying than she's worth.
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