Amazon echo dot

I have mixed feelings writing this as I have been having serious issues with amazon deliveries of late and am frustrated at their lack of customer care or customer service and the fact their couriers have no culpability or recourse. However, separately from any deliveries, the amazon echo dot has been a wonderful addition to our house over the last year.


(image from argos.co.uk)

The adverts for the echo do not go far enough to show how useful it can be for everyday life in my opinion. If I had seen the adverts and not tried the echo, or researched available skills then I don't believe we would have any here. As it is we have three and are seriously hoping to purchase one more.

There are many different skills available for all ages and they are split into categories in the alexa app and I recommend spending a little time looking through these to find specific skills that you would enjoy. Another useful tick box is the alexa updates by email- usually I don't tick any of these boxes, but the alexa updates are useful. It was through one of these emails we were made aware of the migration of drop in and the calling facility to the UK.

The main reason we got our first alexa echo dot was to reduce the demands in our house that came directly from us. We recognised that having someone or something else that could state the need for action or a task to be completed would be beneficial to us all. We had limited options at the time - there are more available now- and the echo dot was affordable at £45 from either Argos or Amazon at the time (although ironically amazon did not have any in stock when we were ready to make our purchase).

We immediately linked up our google calendars with the echo dot and added daily alarms for screens off, bedtime and reminders for daily tasks such as brushing teeth. The children tried all the fun children orientated skills first- of course- so she can fart, meow and bark, tell knock knock jokes (on par with christmas crackers) and many other perhaps useless things besides. We found skills for daily news updates, weather briefings, daily inspiration, daily facts and more which we used every morning to try and spark conversations about topics other than minecraft and pokemon.
It was no long before we realised the echo dot would be more effective if we had a couple of them- we now have three. We have one in our girls' room, one in our son's room and one in the kitchen. We can call eachother through them- saves calling children for dinner repeatedly, listen to music and radio stations on them, listen to audio books via kindle and audible on them, ask how to spell words, ask random internet search questions (sadly she seems to use wikipedia and bing so this is where I can see a google device being far better) and more.

I always have so many tasks and jobs in my head that I forget half of what I am meant to be doing, so use the echo dot with an app called 'if this then that' which a friend told me about. It means I can leave notes with the echo dot, add items to my tesco shopping basket (be careful to check the basket the day before your delivery to remove any dodgy items), set myself cooking alarms, constantly check the date and time, listen to the news and various radio stations and songs, set reminders for us all for various activities and daily tasks, set alarms and send voice messages to other echo dots here too.

She is very useful for when you can't find a dice anywhere too :)

In the constant effort of engaging the children in any topic other than minecraft, pokemon and now arc survival, we also use the following skill commands:
open stop breathe think - for a bit of time out
open magic door- a lovely story where you make decisions about the direction of the story (great for aiding decisions making skills)
start animal game- think of an animal and she will ask you questions and try to guess the animal (nice addition is that she informs you of any facts you were lacking in too)
launch higher lower game- again useful for decision making and number values
open code word- following the clues can you work out the word alexa is 'thinking' of?
play true or false
open combat and hit the dragon with my sword- another decision making story game
play yes sire- a strategic game which keeps your scores from game to game
open guessing game
open escape the room- I particularly enjoy this game but get frustrated when it repeats chunks of text aking to a call centre worker who has to read out a paragraph in response to a certain phrase
start harry potter quiz
open I'm feeling curious
I'm bored
inspire me
start vocabulary builder
open maths coach
launch mystery castle
play runescape

There have been others we have tried for a while and then left to one side.

I keep a list in the kitchen of the command words for each of the above skills as I cannot remember them all, but the regularly used skills become second nature.

A humerous side to having the echo dot is hearing the children shouting at it when it tells them it is screens off time, or time to have a shower.

From a demand avoidant perspective I cannot recommend them enough. 

**a tip- make sure your 'drop in' is disabled in your alexa settings to prevent other alexa users being able to drop in and speak to you through your alexa remotely- unless you are happy with that**


More marketing type information is available here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01DFKBL68/ref=fs_bis
http://www.argos.co.uk/product/6349693

and there are other personal assistants available which may work better for you, I just urge you to look beyond their limited advertising and consider how useful it can be for a family with PDA, autism or any other needs. (I am still trying to hold my husband from purchasing the smart home technology you can link up to the echo dot!)