OK, after hearing the rave reviews on the Echo integration, I am curious where people put their Echo. I have a 2 story 2600 square foot home. I imagine that the Echo isnt sensitive enough for me to use it while I am upstairs, but what is the range on it picking up what you are saying in a normal speaking voice? Can you connect multiple Echos to 1 Smart Things setup? Are there things like portable microphones/extenders to put in other rooms, or maybe third party devices that have a microphone in it, like a connected doorbell w/intercom type thing?
The Echo is pretty good at listening for your voice even in noisy rooms, but you should expect to have to raise your voice at least a little to be heard past 15 feet. I currently have one in my 2nd floor Master Bedroom and one in my 1st floor Kitchen and they work great together. I you have multiple Echos you just need to make sure they aren’t close enough to both be triggered.
I haven’t found a great place yet. I am trying to get her to stop playing the “road trip” playlist every time the commercial comes on. lol
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You can buy the $30 handheld remote that goes with it and it’s basically a little microphone so you can talk to echo from further away. But it’s not two way, so you can’t hear a response.
As far as the coverage from one echo, it’s going to depend very much on the layout of your home.
I live in a mid century modern home built in the 1950s as “space age” so the living room and the kitchen and the dining room all just run into each other and the walls in the hallway are pretty thin. ( I use a wheelchair and it’s a good layout for that. 
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This isn’t my house, but it’s a very similar floor plan:
As I’ve often mentioned we get coverage over eight rooms with one echo. You do have to raise your voice exactly the same way as if you were sitting in the living room and you asked somebody in the kitchen to bring you a soda. You’re not shouting, but it is an attention-getting voice.
We do have two echoes because my housemate also has one that he keeps in his room. So he can talk in a very quiet voice which he likes for late at night. We use different wake words for each one so it doesn’t matter that their listening areas overlap. But right now there are only to wake words available: Amazon and Alexa. They said they’re going to add more in the future. Two worked well for us.
The other one is in the living room. It covers the dining room, family room, kitchen, living room, hallway, the guestroom, the office, and the laundry area. But again in my house if you stood in those areas and spoke fairly loudly, a human in one of the other areas would also hear you.
If you live in a really solidly built brick house with big rooms and tall ceilings and a lot of insulation in the walls, it might only cover one or two rooms.
You can put the same account on each echo so they do all control all the same devices.
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Does Echo come with 1 of the remotes already, or is it only a separate purchase?
Thanks for the responses, love this community lol.
It comes with one, not sure if you can add multiple remotes to it or not but I would assume you can since they sell it separately.
If you got the echo during the beta period, It came with the remote. But they found that most people never used them, so now it’s sold separately.
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Wow, I didn’t know they stopped shipping it with the remote. I’m glad I got mine when I did 
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Do you need to have a prime account, or just an amazon account?
You don’t need to have a prime account to use echo. If you do you have a prime account, you get additional music service features.
It’s available to everyone now. I just checked and it looks like you can only have one remote associated with an Echo. It’s connected to the Echo via Bluetooth.
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SOLD!
20 chars
Still need more chars…lol
I have two in my home. It’s a 2400 ft sq 2 story house. I have one in the kitchen. The downstairs is pretty open and the one echo covers the entire floor.
The second one is in the master bed room and is only used for that room.
You well have to raise your voice from a different room. If others are talking, tv on, other nose, expect to be in the same room. Mine seem to respond best to deeper voices. My wife has a high pitched voices and the younger kids have trouble when close to echo. I can be in the other room and talk over them to get her to respond.
Do not set echo by a water faucet, tv, or fan. Also keep her away from the wall.
Downstairs echo sits in a pass through window in the center of the house. It receives sounds from 360 degrees in this location. It works really well.
Upstairs echo is on the corner of the dresser right next to the wall. I have set up a half moon cardboard background covered in plush cloth.
Echo does not like echoes at all. I tried her in the bathroom and she went nuts. The blue eye was going all over the place. I told her to dim the lights in the shower and she open the garage door…
So experiment on the locations.
Also, do the voice training in the Alexa app.
If you are standing by a running fan, echo has trouble understanding. I think the blades create a fluctuating harmonic in the voice that she heard as echoes n. Just my uneducated guess.
I have one prime account. Both echoes are linked to the one account. That allows both echoes to have control over everything. The prime account is actually linked to the st account, not the actual device.
So being upstairs I can control the downstairs and vice versa.
I love my echo’s and base my home automation around them.
Something I have figured out quickly though… Have redundant backups to your systems. Especially lights and doors n. I am replacing my smart bulbs with smart paddle switches to ensure that everything stays in sync. Some people do not like talking to Alexa… And sometimes she has an attitude and refuses to listen.
Good luck and have fun.
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Has anyone tried positioning Echo upside down from the ceiling so it can be positioned in the middle of the room? I know this defeats the purpose of the mute and volume controls. However, I have a room where no other place works.
That’s actually a pretty good idea. And as for the buttons… Just tell it to turn down the volume. I’ve never actually used the mute button.
I figure if I don’t want the government listening to me, then I should not have it in my house, our my phone, tv, computers, internet, cable, my vehicles… He’ll, if that’s the case, I should just live under a tree in the woods.
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I would ask Amazon support first. The biggest issue with devices like this which have an insane amount of engineering in them is the heat distribution. It could be just fine, it could be a problem. If hanging upside down gives heat in the base no place to release itself, then you actually could damage the unit.
But again, whatever reason the people who build it are the people to ask. It might be just fine.
Unfortunately only one remote per echo is supported. 
This guy has it mounted upside down in his kitchen.
Doesn’t mean it’s safe to do so though. I would still check with Amazon support about potential overheating.
I think I might d that too. LoL!