
Amazon Echo Dot - endtwist
http://www.amazon.com/echodot
======
startupfounder
The transition from primarily visual UX towards an auditorial UX is really
powerful.

Looking at screens to get key information distracts me from my surroundings
and seems archaic.

My wife is a sound designer who has opened my eyes to the importance of sounds
both in film and in the world. It's not that I was unaware of sounds, but I
didn't realize how important they are to centering me in this world and the
made up worlds of films and games. Try watching a scary movie with the sound
turned off, it turns into a comedy.

I think its unexplored territory that has huge potential to impact the way we
interact with the real world, even more so then Glass or Hololens.

When I listen to music as I walk down the street I change, my mood, my posture
and the way I look at the world. The music augments the reality around me in a
way that visual UX never can because it's a lens between my eyes and the
world.

~~~
ghaff
The problem is that voice interfaces break down pretty quickly once you try to
do anything complicated. The Echo has pretty solid voice recognition--far
better than anything else I've ever used--but it's still hard to get it to do
anything useful once you get beyond a pretty narrow script. (e.g. what's the
weather forecast, play this artist, etc.)

~~~
nostrademons
I've found that the voice recognition on Android phones works well enough to
be useful in a wide variety of circumstances. Navigating, getting directions,
setting alarms, taking notes, sending text messages, sending emails, searching
for things, and many more. When I was still using my Moto X I did the majority
of every-day tasks with voice recognition.

The iPhone is catching up fast too...my wife's taken to sending emails via
Siri (to avoid strain on her hands), and most of the time it gets things
perfectly.

The biggest problem is privacy. One of the nice things about touchscreens is
that you have a personal dialog with the device that can't be overheard by
anyone nearby. That doesn't apply to voice recognition systems, and it can be
pretty awkward to dictate an e-mail to a phone in a crowded place.

~~~
xigency
Being overheard isn't the only privacy concern. Most of these solutions
offload the speech recognition and language parsing functions to corporate
servers. I like texting with Siri but I'm not exactly keen on having Apple
record everything. It also seems limiting in that I can't use voice commands
without a network.

It would be nice for voice recognition platforms to start being built in. I
know there's training data that's needed, but there's some convenience
afforded.

~~~
josh2600
I think the processing requirements for handling on-device Siri would destroy
battery life.

~~~
gervase
This actually doesn't seem to be the case. Take a look at Google Translate's
offline voice recognition AND translation - it's really amazing, considering
it's all happening on your device.

~~~
SapphireSun
I forget where it was, but they published something about training a very
small very fast neural network that could fit comfortably in the phone's
memory. Tricky tricky. :D

------
Rezo
"If you have more than one Echo or Echo Dot, you can set a different wake word
for each".

This is something I've been thinking is becoming more problematic as well as
an opportunity for real ubiquity. I have 3 separate devices nearby that are
Google Now voice activated (the newer devices support this even if the screen
is off), and they will sometimes trigger at the same time accidentally.

Since the processing is cloud based, and they know my identity, why don't the
devices recognize this fact and cooperate. Instead of just 7 beam forming mics
in the Echo, if you have two within hearing distance you could have the
benefit of 14 and a unified response. Don't tie the request & response to a
particular device, instead think of it as ubiquitous network that moves with
you as you walk around the household, you should be able to continue your
conversation from one room to the next seamlessly.

~~~
ansible
_Since the processing is cloud based, and they know my identity, why don 't
the devices recognize this fact and cooperate. Instead of just 7 beam forming
mics in the Echo, if you have two within hearing distance you could have the
benefit of 14 and a unified response._

The echo and noise reduction software that I'm aware of can't really do that
in a reasonable fashion.

With current solutions, you've got one DSP that's receiving all the audio
streams simultaneously, and they need to be exactly synchronized in time.
Then, using basically pattern-matching, it figures out what direction the
user's voice is coming from, and combines some/all of the audio streams
together to eliminate environmental noise and make the speech as clear as
possible.

To do this with separate devices, you'd want extremely precise time
synchronization. Which is possible, but I wouldn't want to implement it.

The extra processing and synchronization would take longer, and delay input to
the speech recognition engine. I don't think it would enhance the user
experience.

Edit: spelling.

~~~
t0mbstone
Just have the Echo that hears the person best be the one that responds. So
simple, and easy to implement. I honestly don't understand why Amazon hasn't
fixed this yet. It's so fucking obvious.

~~~
joekrill
> So simple, and easy to implement.

Ah yes, the rally cry of the person not doing the actual development work...
In my experience, rarely is _anything_ "So simple, and easy to implement".

------
caractacus
When did I turn from the enthusiastic kid who dreamed of audio-controlled
personal assistants like this to a cranky old man who doesn't want anything
remotely spy-possible in his house?

~~~
ryandrake
I love "smart" devices, but hate "devices that needlessly insist on connecting
to the Internet".

One of the worst offenders is Dropcam. They have a super camera, easy to set
up and use. Great picture quality. Would be an awesome baby monitor or "closed
circuit TV replacement". But why the goddamn hell does it need to connect to
the Internet? Why is the only option available to needlessly stream video out
of my home network to the cloud, only so that I can then stream it back into
my home network for viewing??? WTF? That's both a waste of outbound bandwidth
and a waste of inbound bandwidth. I should be able to put it on my network,
switch off the cable modem, and still be able to view video locally. How hard
is that? I could do that with a webcam and a really long USB cable!

~~~
kayoone
Alexa probably uses forms of machine learning and also queries lots of
services to find the answers you need. Also it learns from every user and gets
better for every user this way. That would be really hard to do with an
offline device.

~~~
sib
Yes, that is exactly how it works.

If you, as a customer, want to, you can go to Amazon.com and delete all your
voice history (or any single interaction).

------
danesparza
There is something delightfully ballsy about making this only available to
users of Alexa Voice shopping:

"Echo Dot is available in limited quantities and exclusively for Prime members
through Alexa Voice Shopping. To order your Echo Dot, use your Amazon Echo or
Amazon Fire TV and just ask: "Alexa, order an Echo dot"

Also, this makes me sad. I'd kind of like to try this out, but I have no Alexa
voice service currently (I don't think)

~~~
matthewbauer
I think it needs a base Amazon echo to work if I understand correctly.

~~~
bovermyer
No, it needs external speakers, unlike the original Echo. However, you only
need an Echo to preorder a Dot, you don't need an Echo for a Dot to work.

~~~
sp332
FTA: _Includes a built-in speaker so it can work on its own_

~~~
corin_
Built in speaker is for alarms, not media, I think.

~~~
wyldfire
it does seem to exclude media.

> Built-in speaker for voice feedback when not connected to external speakers
> > Includes a built-in speaker so it can work on its own as a smart alarm
> clock in the bedroom, an assistant in the kitchen, or anywhere you might
> want a voice-controlled computer

~~~
Touche
That's crazy, why do I want this without a speaker? The bluetooth speakers
they recommend are all really expensive; a speaker + Echo Dot is more
expensive than a regular Echo... why wouldn't I just get a second Echo?

~~~
IshKebab
You can plug it into a hifi system.

------
jbob2000
Somewhat related, but if I don't subscribe to any of the services listed, this
is a pretty useless product for me. I don't listen to internet radio, I don't
stream music, I don't order delivery, I don't use uber, there's already 10
million ways to check the weather, and my life isn't busy enough to need a
voice-activated calendar.

Is this the future of tech? Like do I need to have some kind of urban-go-
getter lifestyle to find use in any of this? When can I get something useful,
rather than "thing I already do, but in a new package"?

~~~
publicfig
What would you find useful? You seem upset that a product was designed for a
user that is not you, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a use. Subscribing
to music streaming services, ordering delivery, using Uber; these aren't
incredibly uncommon things just because you don't use them. It is rare for new
and exciting technology to just pop out of nowhere. Almost all new products
are reiterations of previous products in new and interesting packages, it's
just up to you to decide if it's worth moving to.

~~~
jbob2000
Totally fair point! But would you buy an Echo Dot if you only used Uber and
didn't use any of the other services? Or if you used 1 or 2 of the services?
How many of these services do you need to use before the functionality of Echo
becomes apparent?

I want to be a fly-on-the-wall when someone sets one of these up in their
home. I can't picture it fitting in with my lifestyle, so I'm curious to see
how others would actually use it. Or would it just gather dust and become a
conversation piece?

~~~
hirsin
I find it fantastically useful for social gatherings in my small apartment.
While cooking we listen to music from the Echo, and have equal control over
the music selection (vs "Who has the iPhone? Can you turn it up? Oh, it needs
unlocked") and timers for cooking. It could be far more powerful with playlist
creation.

After that, it's Uber, schedule, and weather on my way out the door. As I
leave I ask it to turn off the lights.

So I use at least 5 of its features (and stream Pandora/NPR on it, so 7?), and
find it useful. I don't think I would miss it, but I do find myself wishing
for it a bit when I'm at a friend's house that doesn't have one.

------
xd1936
My problem with Alexa is, I don't want to invest in a new ecosystem. I'm fine
with Amazon being the hub that connects all of my services, but I don't want
to use Amazon To-Do List, Amazon Prime Radio, Amazon Traffic, Amazon Sports,
Amazon Calendar, Amazon Weather.

That being said, they announce partnerships with more and more services every
month. Things are looking up.

~~~
hammock
It's not perfect, but it is linked now with Spotify, ESPN and other
publishers, Google Calendar...

More importantly, they have done a good job (leagues better than the competing
voice services) of opening their service to developers thru Alexa Skills,
which has enabled hundreds of added features including things like ordering an
Uber.

~~~
komodo
I just wish the Skills weren't behind that unnatural syntax.

E.g. Alexa, Ask recipes how do I make an omelet? instead of: Alexa, how do I
make an omelet?

I imagine it's to prevent conflicts but I'd like the option to put some
services in the default namespace as it were.

------
rdl
Just ordered a Dot -- what is the Tap? They added that to the page, too, but
no info. Is it just the next gen Echo?

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/3/11148776/amazon-echo-tap-
sp...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/3/11148776/amazon-echo-tap-speaker-
price-availability-photos-video)

Ahh -- the Tap is a portable device with wifi speaker.

(Probably wouldn't call an audio monitoring box the "tap"

~~~
raldi
How much was it? I can't find pricing info anywhere.

~~~
unwind
What? The price of the Echo Dot ($89.99) is clearly at the top of the article.

~~~
raldi
Weird; when I click it (I'm on mobile), it takes me to a special part of the
Amazon app, and there's no price, and it says it can only be ordered by voice
by people with existing Amazon hardware that can do that.

------
thecodemonkey
Wow, what a coincidence. I just did a setup like this with Amazon Echo and
Sonos, by "hacking" the Amazon Echo to do audio-out.

I wrote up a little post on it here:
[https://medium.com/@MathiasHansen/hacking-an-amazon-echo-
and...](https://medium.com/@MathiasHansen/hacking-an-amazon-echo-and-
integrating-it-with-sonos-75dbcc02f5b5#.4pu7ca7jx)

Obviously, actually having bluetooth speakers with the Echo Dot is a much
better solution, but after using the Sonos setup for 3-4 weeks I must say that
it works surprisingly well, and despite the audio hack the sound quality is
excellent on my Play 1's.

~~~
dwyerm
Meh... the problem with Bluetooth speakers is that many of them don't handle
the always-on use-case.

My soundbar would work well, but Alexa would get muzzled every time I turned
on the TV to watch something. On the other hand, my portable bluetooth speaker
will run out of battery if left on its charger.

The AUX connection is almost a better option, but then am I supposed to leave
my amp turned on all the time? There's also the same problem where Alexa loses
her voice when I switch the amp over to the Bluray player.

------
binarymax
Be forewarned - if I am invited into your home for any reason, and I see an
Alexa device, I will vocally add a large shopping list of nonsense to your
Amazon cart :)

~~~
fredley
Serious question: is it feasible to implement a kind of loose voice
'fingerprint' to prevent this kind of thing? Will/could Alexa know who's
talking to it?

~~~
jethro_tell
I really want an 'Alexa, stop listenting' command. There's a button on the top
that mutes the mic and puts a red ring around them, but when I have people
over, it's not a great environment to use voice commands anyways.

'Everyone be quite so I can shout across the room to change my music'

~~~
Karunamon
A workaround would be to mute the device itself, and then use the remote
(which has its own mic, and works well in noisy environments since you just
hold it closer to your mouth).

~~~
jethro_tell
but then I just have to carry a remote while I'm having a party.

~~~
Karunamon
It's not a bad idea. If you're hosting, it lets you change the music without
interrupting your guests.

------
swalsh
Will this be linked together with my echo? One thing I do quite often since my
echo is in my kitchen is use it to set a timer. I'd like to be able to go to
my office upstairs, and ask it how much time is left. Today, i don't think
that's possible even with a second echo.

~~~
rdl
I have two echoes now. Timers are separate, backend content is synced. You
could use the Amazon dev kit to make a universal timer. (That is a good use
case)

The Alexa iOS app has a good drop down to manage each device separately.

------
Fluid_Mechanics
Amazon was the only Big Four company silent on the data privacy lawsuit with
Apple. Why would I place one of their always-listening products in my living
room?

~~~
portmanteaufu
They also stood with Apple.

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/26/technology/apple-
microsoft-g...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/26/technology/apple-microsoft-
google-amazon-facebook/)

~~~
Fluid_Mechanics
Thanks for the update.

------
nilsjuenemann
Only for US customers...

"Requirements

* A U.S. Amazon account

* A U.S. shipping address (50 United States and the District of Columbia only)

* An annual Amazon Prime membership or 30-day Amazon Prime free trial

* A payment method issued by a U.S. bank with a U.S. billing address in your 1-Click settings

* A device with access to the Alexa Voice Service (such as Amazon Echo)"

~~~
vonklaus
I'm American. This makes sense, if anyone was going to order awhat seems like
a range extender, for a device that just brings you stuff you were too lazy to
type, it would be Americans.

Googleglass problem. The interface is me yelling publicly. So not super sure
that is going to be adopted well.

~~~
rdl
I use them in my home. Being able to ask it to set a cooking timer while my
hands are full is pretty awesome.

Echo is one of those things where it became magically awesome by being
somewhat more accurate than I'd expect. Also, Amazon is updating the service
back ends, and it is now extensible.

------
pierrebeaucamp
I would love to have something similar as open source software. How can I
trust this device if I can't examine the code used for hotword recognition?

Also, it would be great to be able to put the software on different hardware -
something with digital audio output for example. The concept of Alexa is
amazing, but distributing it as properitary software limits its potential.

~~~
mk4p
There's:

\- [https://jasperproject.github.io/](https://jasperproject.github.io/)

and

\- [https://mycroft.ai/projects/](https://mycroft.ai/projects/)

~~~
pierrebeaucamp
Thank you, I didn't know about those projects.

------
davis_m
I'm not entirely clear on the difference between the regular Echo and the Echo
Dot. It appears you have to have an original Echo in order to purchase a Dot.
Is this simply an extension that proxies all of the requests back to the
original Echo?

~~~
joshstrange
It's the Echo using your own speaker (it has a tiny one still). The "ordering
through your existing FireTV/Echo" is just a stupid marketing ploy. As far as
we know right not it does not talk to other Echo's on your network (no
proxying/grid/mesh/etc).

~~~
joeyramone
You can order it here without an Echo: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/B00VKTZFB4/ref=dp_olp...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/B00VKTZFB4/ref=dp_olp_new_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=new)

~~~
joshstrange
Which is probably a link sent to you from your Echo, if you search it on
amazon you just get this page
[http://smile.amazon.com/b/?node=14047587011](http://smile.amazon.com/b/?node=14047587011)

------
BatFastard
I love my echo! I probably use it 15-25 times a day. 1) Acts as my alarm 2)
Turn on my favorite radio station while I make breakfast. 3) Timers for
cooking breakfast. 4) Listen to flash news 5) Alarm again if I need a nap. 6)
Timers for lunch meal 7) Add item to shopping list. 8) Add todo items. 9)
Plays spotify while I work on my computer from across the room. 10) More flash
news (its really quite extensive) 11) more naps 12) dinner timer 13) news 14)
word definitions 15) Tell it to stop when it starts talking in the middle of a
conversation (a bit annoying). 16) more todos 17) Order more dogs treats 18)
Play bedtime music Worth every penny. Where did the strange sense of "everyone
is spying on you" come from? A bloated sense of self importance?

~~~
nogbit
Wow, you need a reality check here with your "A bloated sense of self
importance?". Here is some history for you....

My Dad has written a book about Native Americans in the pacific northwest.
Part of his research turned up personnel letters from an officer in the US
Cavalry long ago (many officers). These letters were very personnel, and only
ever meant to be read by his wife. Unfortunately, these letters were passed
down in the family many times up until recently a family member got fed up
with this box of letters and donated it to the University of Washington where
my Dad found the letters relevant to his research, and others of personal
nature as I explained.

You can't even begin to imagine what devices (production, backup, test, hacked
versions, amazon, nsa etc) that your voice is sitting on now and what those
devices and interfaces will look like 100 years from now and who or what will
be using them, heck, even 10 years from now is a mystery.

So don't become famous, run for office or try to be big corp CEO or even use
any social network because one day something you said while your echo was
recording will bite you or your grandkids in the ass!

I would love to use a service like echo, it looks slick, but if I cant verify
the source code or trust some community who has then it will never be in my
house.

~~~
SirensOfTitan
> So don't become famous, run for office or try to be big corp CEO

I don't necessarily disagree, but the vast majority of people will do none of
these things mentioned.

The real issue is that of a person's private life seeping into all of their
interactions with society. A person could be easily controlled even in private
settings if a misstep could land them without a job, ruin a marriage, or cost
a person their freedom.

With that being said, the majority of people don't care about privacy. Almost
all of us are oversharing (although the demographic on HN are likely more
privacy-conscious than most). Either we're all going to get bitten in the ass,
or somehow we'll adapt as a society to accept others more deeply (as the
alternative is mutual destruction).

I'm quite privacy conscious myself, but when does our habits of privacy-first
make us bigger targets than others who are not?

------
rogerb
I would not be surprised if it turns out that Alexa is the biggest thing
they've ever done, including AWS.

~~~
adventured
Zero chance of that.

AWS will likely be a $100-$150 billion market value business in five years,
with $6-$8 billion in operating income. They're tracking to $3.x billion in
operating income in the next four quarters. It'll be valued as highly as Intel
and Oracle.

A device that tells you the weather, orders an Uber, or orders more low margin
merchandise off of Amazon, is not going to generate that kind of massive
financial return. You can look at every lucrative business Echo could touch,
and there's no scenario under which it could extract a large amount of
monetary value. Ads? Not a chance. Sales referrals? No, the high margin stuff
people want to visually browse for. Services? It could be 50 times larger than
Angie's List and still not match AWS. Ordering Ubers? Ordering food? Ordering
movie tickets? Relatively small sales, small percentage cut businesses.

~~~
eclipxe
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

------
monkmartinez
Still too expensive, imo. I've read a lot about "Alexa" and Echo... and beside
the privacy issues, in many cases the Echo quickly becomes an expensive
speaker (after the kids and everyone else gets tired of asking "Alexa"
questions).

$89 is not in my compulsion buy price range. I may be in the minority on that
though...

~~~
ghaff
I sorta agree. I got the original Echo for $100 when they had a special deal
for Prime members. The timer is handy. The shopping list is handy. It's
occasionally vaguely useful to ask it questions about the weather or other
things--though it's not like my phone is that far away. I do use it for Amazon
Music when I can't be bothered finding something to play on my stereo.

Potentially, the ability to interface with home automation devices will make
it more useful but I'm honestly not sure how much of that stuff I will ever
use.

I'm happy enough that I bought it but I probably wouldn't buy more to put in
other rooms.

[Edit: I think if I lived in a small place and didn't have another music
source I'd find it more generally useful.]

~~~
PKop
The single greatest feature of Echo that I use, (and too few others use) is
turning on my Phillips Hue lights. You can give each individual light a name,
as well as groups of lights their own name. Very convenient to turn on / off
lights from anywhere in range of the mic.

I use it everyday multiple times a day. If anyone finds network connected
lights useful, then they'll find controlling them through Echo doubly useful
as it obviates the need to pick up your smartphone.

~~~
ghaff
Not to pick on you :-), but I have these things called light switches in my
house that work pretty well for turning on and off lights. I confess to not
seeing much attraction to smart lightbulbs with names.

(To be fair, if I had a lot of lights not connected to switches as was the
case when I moved into my current house, I'd probably have put in smart
lightbulbs rather than doing as much rewiring as I did.)

~~~
t0mbstone
Light switches are great, but there is something really nice about laying in
bed and dimming the lights by voice.

Or right before going to sleep, you remember you left the living room light
on, so you say, "Alexa, turn off the living room light", and watch as the glow
under the door disappears.

It's a luxury, but it's a lot of fun if you are lazy.

I also use the Echo to adjust my nest thermostat, control my entire home
theater (with 6 different devices), and control my tempurpedic adjustable bed
and even remote start my car.

I find the possibilities of voice control and home automation to be
intoxicating, and hacking around with the Echo is sort of one of my hobbies
right now.

~~~
dharma1
How do you use it to control your home theatre?

------
tnorthcutt
_Echo Dot ($89.99) is available exclusively for Prime Members through Alexa
Voice Shopping. To order your Echo Dot, use your Echo or Fire TV and just ask:
“Alexa, order Echo Dot.”_

~~~
abawany
I nearly renewed my Prime membership on reading the first part but then
stopped when I read the second part. Holy market segmentation, batman - why
actively repel new customers and only make this available to those mini-me-
philes who already have an Echo?

~~~
xauronx
Pssst: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/B00VKTZFB4/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00VKTZFB4/)

~~~
abawany
Ah, thank you. You have likely won Amazon a Prime renewal :). EDIT: gosh,
didn't even require Prime membership to order - thanks again.

------
Gratsby
Man... I had my audrey doing this in the '90s. I can't believe I missed the
boat and somebody else is making a bajillion dollars. It's time to search
through the archives of all the cool stuff we did 20 years ago and put it in a
shiny new wrapper.

~~~
avenueb
x-10 FTW!

~~~
ghaff
I still have a couple of X10 lights controlled wirelessly in my house. When I
moved in, many of the lights in the house weren't wired to switches but just
had pull chains. Over time, most of the house has been rewired and switches
added but I still have a couple of lights that haven't been connected to
switches and I still use X10 for them.

~~~
Gratsby
Years ago... mid to late 90s... I had everything X-10'ed up in my house. What
I didn't know is that my house alarm was also X-10 capable.

One night, I couldn't enter the code in time and you could see what house was
alarming for miles around. Inside and outside the house, everything that could
blink was blinking - to go along with the blaring sound.

I cancelled the alarm service (and kept the alarm) soon after because 1) it
would freak anybody breaking into my house out, and 2) if the cops couldn't
figure out that there was something going on at my house without somebody
having to call them, they just weren't doing their job.

------
gizmodo59
"To order your Echo Dot, use your Amazon Echo or Amazon Fire TV and just
ask..." An Expensive marketing campaign to sell Echo and Fire TV?

~~~
swalsh
Maybe a bit more, as an echo user I've never ordered anything from my echo...
however once I do, i'll probably do it again. The dot could be a gateway drug
:D

------
IgorPartola
Hmm. The Dot might be a good addition, but it's too expensive. I want to put
several mic & speaker combos around my house, but I don't want to pay $90 per
room. Something in the $25-$40 range would do much better, even if it was a
simple relay to the main Echo.

------
ausjke
My FireTV is also upgraded to Alexa silently recently and it's fun to play
with.

Is it possible for me to upload my own content, say an audio book, some music
I own etc so I can use Alexa as a voice command to fetch my own data too? be
it on the cloud or my local NAS/DLNA box.

~~~
rpgmaker
My dream is to have some kind of android TV box that performs this.

~~~
ausjke
For voice activated solutions the hard part is the front end, i.e. voice
recognition, which is what Alexa is strong at. Once this is covered, it's
relatively easy to cover the rest. Really the core competency of Alexa is its
excellent voice recognition performance, which is still hard to find elsewhere
these days.

~~~
ausjke
[https://www.quora.com/Speech-Recognition/Which-is-the-
best-o...](https://www.quora.com/Speech-Recognition/Which-is-the-best-open-
source-ASR-for-non-commercial-usage-Is-HTK-still-be-best-given-its-long-
history-and-rich-documents)

There are a few open source alternative, Kaldi is new to me

~~~
dharma1
This one looks promising too, although very early days.
[https://github.com/srvk/eesen](https://github.com/srvk/eesen)

I think we'll see something state of the art (that runs on mobile devices
pretty soon in the open source world.

You also need a good microphone setup to get good quality speech in.

Both Echo and Dot have a 7 mic array with beamforming, which helps a lot with
far field speech recognition.

------
chinathrow
My problem with Alexa is, I don't want a far field cloud based voice
recognition device within my reach.

I'm fine with a device doing the voice recognition on premise/on device with
the same functionality.

~~~
endergen
Versus a close field cloud based device in your pocket? I'd be more
comfortable if knowing that Alexa is truly not listening unless the blue light
is on.

But I hear your point. I think we're all getting lulled into just giving up on
totally ruling out our most paranoid considerations. Not that it isn't quite
rational to be paranoid given the constant barrage of proof of device
exploitation and mass surveillance.

------
roymurdock
Classic hub/spoke model

Echo = hub, too expensive and large to buy 10 for every room in the house,
used for receiving, processing, routing info from spokes and cloud

Echo dot = spoke, microphone and AI functionality at a lower price point,
distributes connectivity network throughout the entire house so that you don't
have to walk from your kitchen to your living room to order new paper towels
from Amazon

~~~
knodi123
not hub/spoke at all. the dot and the echo are separate standalone products.
The only reason you're required to own an Echo to get a Dot is because it's a
"limited supply" product, and they want to make sure that only loyal customers
get to review the new thing in order to seed some positive reviews.

------
JabavuAdams
I want this technology, but I don't want to send this info to Amazon. Guess I
have to continue on my own half-assed implementation.

------
source99
How are these 2 "new" products different from the normal echo?

~~~
runholm
One does not feature a good speaker and is intended to connect to your
existing speaker system. The other is portable.

------
tostitos1979
What is the difference between Echo, Tap and Dot? It is confusing me a bit.

Dot: has no speakers? Requires bluetooth based pairing. Requires an Echo to
work?

Tap: has wireless speakers with a built in battery. Also seems to have a Mic.
Do I need an Echo to make this work? Can the tap work with the dot?

------
mc32
I don't own one of these devices, yet I'm curious, can you "modify the
device's name"? I mean, what if someone in the household has the name Alexa.
No, not you Alexa, the other Alexa. Alexa do your homework. Alexa take out the
garbage.

~~~
jedberg
Yes, by default you can call it Amazon instead. I have this problem because I
have a cousin named Alexis and my Echo gets confused when she comes over. But
I still keep it at Alexa.

~~~
mc32
Good to know, thanks.

------
fosco
when I saw Amazon 'Tap' I was hoping to see a star trek communicator[0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicator_(Star_Trek)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicator_\(Star_Trek\))

~~~
mh-
this should already be possible for a 3rd party to build with Alexa Voice
Service. would be really neat to see.

[https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-
vo...](https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice-
service)

------
Roanoke
Any reason why Echoes couldn't communicate with other Echoes? My friend and I
own Echoes. I could say "Alexa, call Joe" Joe and I could talk to each other
through the Echoes over the internet.

~~~
al_chemist
Or even "Alexa, eavesdrop on Joe".

------
rdudek
What's stopping people from accidentally ordering things with this thing?
Could I go into somebody's house that has one of these devices setup and say
"Alexa, order some breast clamps" ?

~~~
jedberg
Yes. Yes you can. Hilarity ensues.

The "security" is the you have to trust the people you invite into your house.

It's not great security. :)

(ok, that's not entirely true. as far as I can tell, you can only reorder
things they've already bought via the website)

~~~
foodstances
Make a webpage that automatically starts playing an audio clip of someone
saying those things, trick people into visiting the page and hope their laptop
isn't muted.

------
Roanoke
Any reason Echoes couldn't communicate with each other? I envision my friend
and I own an Echo. I could say "Alexa, call Joe". We could talk to each other
through the Echo over the internet.

------
masonhipp
This is a better product than the original. They added one of the most
requested features (audio out) and didn't remove anything important (unless
you don't have a better plug-in speaker system).

The biggest oversight is now the fact that it can't work together with an
existing Echo: Amazon is making us order these _using_ an Echo... but the two
devices don't communicate at all and require individual wake words. I wanted
this as an added mic for my existing system, not as a new independent system.

Big step in the right direction though.

~~~
roymurdock
Connecting them will be as simple as a future software update. Amazon's
challenge right now is to get the hardware in place before its competitors
(Nest, Apple) - and it seems to be pressing hard to get a wide range of
devices in every room of the house.

~~~
masonhipp
I agree with you on this, but generally they'd have an easier job of it if
they worked as a connected mesh rather than independent controllers. I can't
say for certain but it doesn't seem like the added engineering time would be
that much greater.

------
azinman2
Can anyone else order this through their Fire TV? I'm just getting "Your
search did not match anything in our catalog."

I could also be doing this wrong as I literally unboxed my fire tv just for
this. I'm using the companion iOS app to access the microphone, but selected
the phrase on the Fire TV.

The voice rec also sucked. I had to say the damn sentence like 9 times in an
unnatural way. I hope that's not indicative of this experience I'm wanting to
order...

------
tlrobinson
> Echo Dot ($89.99) is available exclusively for Prime Members through Alexa
> Voice Shopping.

Huh? Why would they prevent _new customers_ from ordering this?

~~~
BooneJS
I presume because they've had trouble keeping the original Echo in stock. And
they want Prime members more than Echo Dot owners.

~~~
tlrobinson
It's not just Prime, you need one of the other Alexa products to order it.

~~~
mjmj
>> you need one of the other Alexa products to order it.

It likely that DOT uses the Echo as a parent device to do all processing of
things like sending the voice requests to the servers and back and the DOT
just works as a microphone slave device with some basic synchronization to
determine which device heard the wakeword first. If DOT hears it first it
sends the voice data to Echo and Echo does it's normal thing and sends the
response back to DOT. (At least that was the intent when I worked on early
versions of the project.)

~~~
tlrobinson
The product page doesn't mention Echo as a requirement, AFAICT.

------
atemerev
As usual, all goodies are US only :(

I want Alexa for my home automation, and I don't mind speaking English to her.
But tough luck in Switzerland.

------
FoeNyx
In one example: "Alexa, adjust my home thermostat to 74 degrees"

It would kill some people if used here in Europe (because we would rather
adjust our thermostats in radians).

More seriously, is there any protections against dangerous orders? (eg Your
kid ordering 42 tons of sweets on Amazon)

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"

------
mjmj
I would buy the Tap if it was always on listening while on the cradle but then
push button while portable. Doesn't look like it works that way from the
description. I get that it takes too much battery to have 7 always listening
microphones on, but while on the cradle, this should be a non-issue.

------
sh1mmer
"If you have more than one Echo or Echo Dot, you can set a different wake word
for each—you can pick "Amazon", "Alexa" or "Echo" as the wake word."

So they haven't solved the I have multiple Echos in my house problem yet..

~~~
ergothus
They raised your options by 50%! (It used to just be "Amazon" or "Alexa").

But in seriousness, I have no idea why thy haven't enabled at least a larger
list of wake words.

------
horsecaptin
I'd love to read a few stories about how people use their Alexas in meaningful
ways.

------
donpdonp
The dot sounds great but I cringed when I read about the tap. Its increasingly
common for people to play cell phone audio in enclosed places without
consideration of others. The tap seems to be designed to make it even easier
to do so.

~~~
mjmj
You mean like ALL portable bluetooth speakers?

------
hayksaakian
Note: this refers to the "Alexa" voice assistant, not Alexa the domain ranking
company (also owned by amazon)

[http://i.imgur.com/B6dsMNm.png](http://i.imgur.com/B6dsMNm.png)

------
bovermyer
I absolutely adore my Echo. But I live in a small apartment, so I really don't
see a need to buy a Dot as a second Echo device, even if the size and price
make it a more attractive option than the original Echo.

------
GaetanJUVIN
Actually, I think this is very useful for two things: \- Set timer for cooking
\- Listen music

I’m sceptical about getting other skills. "Alexa ask MyApp to do something”…
it’s very long and annoying

But I strongly believe they will improve that.

------
ASinclair
I'll always be a bit bitter toward the Echo project. I had a really great
manager transfer to that project when I worked at Amazon. It's part of the
reason I left. Glad to see them do well though.

------
skc
I'm wondering why it took the product being from Amazon for geeks to finally
be ok with a device that silently listens to everything you say in your home
and sends that data to Amazon's servers.

~~~
xyzzy_plugh
This is FUD, it doesn't do this. Only data recorded after you say "Alexa" or
the like is sent up. There is also a mute button.

~~~
skc
It's not FUD. We've had countless stories scare mongering about smart TVs that
"may be spying on you"

If this device was from Samsung I think the giddiness over it would be alot
more tempered.

------
wehadfun
I think the number 1 use for voice control is the car. The current (Apple
Car/Android Auto) are good but I would be interested in a better experience.
Would like for Amazon Alexa to work in auto.

------
gagzilla
If Amazon gains by providing this service to prime members then why don't they
have a voice control app for iOS/Android to connect with Alexa? (not just the
setup Alexa app)

------
josep2
Would be awesome if I could connect and control my Sonos from it.

~~~
radnor
You can! :) [https://github.com/rgraciano/echo-
sonos](https://github.com/rgraciano/echo-sonos)

~~~
josep2
You're a true hero for sharing this.

------
nataliam511
This solves a huge pain point I have with my Alexa. That being said, it will
still understand any man's voice in my home better than my own. Decisions
decisions.

------
mrbill
This, a sort of "extender", is what I've been wishing for since the original
Echo came out. Ordering tonight (since I can't do it from work).

------
donpdonp
Are there any open source projects trying to emulate the cloud-based voice
recognition that Amazon/Google/etc are doing for Alexa/OK Google?

~~~
ziszis
Kaldi. "Kaldi is a toolkit for speech recognition written in C++ and licensed
under the Apache License v2.0."

[http://kaldi.sourceforge.net](http://kaldi.sourceforge.net)

------
steele
Amazon is offering a free t-hirt to people adding new Alexa skills... that's
the bar for adding to their ecosystem now -- a t-shirt.

------
goshx
I like this idea very much. By making it cheaper and smaller, Echo can easily
become the ears of any electronic in the house.

------
andy318
"To order your Echo Dot, use your Amazon Echo or Amazon Fire TV and just ask:
Alexa, order an Echo Dot."

------
ckl1810
How is this any more invasive than what FB/Google knows about us?

------
snickmy
Device with a microphone always on from a an NSA affiliate company.

Interesting.

------
dabeeeenster
Why don't Amazon have an Alexa iOS/Android app?

~~~
erikdared
Does this not work standalone?
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.dee...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.dee.app)

~~~
sp332
No, when you launch the app you have to put in your Alexa ID. You need at
least an Amazon Fire TV to get the ID.

------
swehner
Everything a (smart) phone should be able to do, no?

