Audio is probably all the we need. It’s really to remind the kids to get ready for bed, time for dinner, you’re late for school, did you brush your teeth yet, etc.
I’ve been scouring and thought the same idea as others to have Amazon echo/dot be able to connect with each other and handsfree voice call units throughout the house. That would be nice.
The nucleus had video as well but my 12 year old covered the camera all the time so video wasn’t useful anyway.
Well, thanks @JDRoberts for the shout out…
I have a Bluetooth/Wi-Fi speaker in each of the kids rooms as well as their bathroom.
I have piston in CoRE that are setup for TTS and some lights and stuff.
I have a separate install of askAlexa for each kid.
So, if I want to tell Justin to come downstairs I just say, “Alexa, tell Justin to come downstairs” and it is announced on his speaker.
It works great.
Can you provide any more details (type of speaker, how you set up CoRE and askAlexa, etc)? This sounds like exactly what I need in my house.
Sure thing…
AskAlexa…
I have multiple installs of the smartapp. That means a complete install to include the lambda and Amazon developer setups for each install.
The macros are setup like this.
CoRE has a ton of DO piston, one for each macro.
And each piston looks like this…
It’s a lot of work to setup, but speaking to Alex’s feels more natural.
Instead of:
“Alexa, tell Home to tell Alex to come downstairs”
I just say:
“Alexa, tell Alex to come downstairs”
My speaker are Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth made by a company called Pure.
The speakers are model Jongo s3 and t1.
I use this smartappfor st integration.
Can the kids reply as well, or is it one way communication?
This post deserves it’s own thread. What an awesome thing to set up. I have finally found a purpose for Ask Alexa in our home that’s worth the trouble of fully configuring. 
Thanks.
But there is so much more that askAlexa can do.
When I go to bed I tell the home that it’s bed time. It tells me that all of the doors and windows are closed and what the temps are in the house… and more.
My personal favorite is the continued commands function… oh, and changing light colors… oh and along the last time the dog was fed and she tells me!
Yeah… and a whole lot more… this app Perry much completely replaces my native Alexa integration.
Right now it is one way communication. Once my 6 doors arrive I’ll have Alexa in every room of the house.
I guess my issue is that AskAlexa is so powerful, I don’t know what to do with it.
I have it installed and configured, and I set it up to tell me if my exterior lights are on, but I can’t find a very solid use case for my own purpose. Seeing how others are implementing it, especially when they are tying it to CoRE is what is giving me that “Oh! I never thought of that and I can use it in my own home!” realization.
I guess I just need to see use cases as clearly defined as your post above. That’s what made me go “HOLY SH**! I NEED THIS!”
Yeah, I’m the same way… I Get inspiration from others uses.
If you used a Raspberry Pi as your media interface, couldn’t you add the Alexa software to the pi and a button and use it in reverse as well? It wouldn’t work with your setup, but for anyone setting it up or already using a Pi, this might work as a functional 2-way intercom.
That is possible, but the voice would not play on Alexa. You have to use another speaker.
I have figured out how to mimic the “Simon says” function of Alexa without having to say Simon says… But currently you can not choose an echo device to play it on. It plays on the device you are talking to.
Though I have been able to mimic the Simon says function and choose another speaker for it to play on… That has worked, which is really neat because she captures your voice and replays it… no preprogrammed messages… It’s tts on the fly.
Also, once I have Alice of my dots (Alexa in every room) I will set it up so that others can respond the same way.
Yeah, I didn’t think about the fact that the original Echo in this scenario wouldn’t be able to play. You’d need another TTS-connected speaker, which kinda defeats the purpose. Hopefully Amazon comes through with the rumor that you’ll be able to get notifications via Echo without prompting.
Yeah it would be great to be able to choose an echo device for playback.
I wanted give an update here…
Check out this app
Easier to set up and you have free form TTS instead canned messages.
