[New] Amazon devices (September 24, 2020)

What about the car alarm stuff and the gaming services?!

That drone though! :heart_eyes:

Car alarm is shown above. As for gaming, I limited my posts to hardware. You are welcome to list all the others such as Luna, twitch and other. :slight_smile:

I image the drone will scare many household pets. I wonder if it will cause any interruptions with other devices.

Does anyone know how the Echo devices handle zigbee? As more of them are now coming with zigbee hubs onboard you’re likely to have multiple zigbee controllers in your house. Do you have to choose an echo to pair a device to or does it ‘load balance’ or mesh itself?

Just thinking it might solve my issues with Smartthings buttons which refuse to operate away from the smartthings hub (they seem to be too lazy to mesh back through the repeater devices)

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We have one echo show second generation set up as a Zigbee controller for some light switches so that I will have a voice control path of lights from my room to the front door even if the Internet is out. (I am quadriparetic, so I can’t just go over and flip a switch)

You do have to choose an echo to pair with and as far as I can tell none of the other echoes participate in that network even if they do have a zigbee coordinator inside. (Which makes sense, the zigbee profile that they are using only allows for one coordinator per network.)

However, be aware that if you set the buttons up that way they are no longer available to smartthings. Again because you can only have one coordinator per network And a Zigbee device can only belong to one network. And the buttons can’t be used to trigger Alexa routines, because those only work off of sensors at this time.

Also, I don’t even know if the buttons will work with them: it’s a pretty simple network. So the whole press, double press, long hold thing may not work.

I don’t have any of the smartthings buttons, so I haven’t tried them myself.

Jamie Siminoff, Ring’s founder and “chief inventor,” says the idea behind the Always Home Cam is to provide multiple viewpoints throughout the home without requiring the use of multiple cameras. In an interview ahead of the announcement, he said the company has spent the past two years on focused development of the device, and that it is an “obvious product that is very hard to build.” Thanks to advancements in drone technology, the company is able to make a product like this and have it work as desired.

I’ll be honest, this looks to me like one of those CES announcements which is designed to get press and will never come to market. But Amazon doesn’t usually do those, so I could be wrong. The number of things that could go wrong with this, though, are very concerning. Especially for any house with kids under about 10.

But then people said the same kind of thing about robot vacuums, and they’ve ended up working fine so
 I could certainly be wrong.

This one is really interesting. If you have another security service that works with Alexa like abode or scout or ring, it looks like saying “Alexa, call for help” Will connect you to the agents for the service you subscribe to if that service is participating in the guard plus program.

Otherwise, it appears to me from first report to be more like Noonlight: It will connect you to a “group of trained agents who will call 911 on your behalf.”

The difference is that the agents from the service that you subscribe to have information on your home and family in their database and most of them are UL certified for security services.

If you don’t have one of those services, they don’t have the other information on you (like your neighbor’s phone number) And in some jurisdictions they are only allowed to call 911 the same way a stranger walking past your house is.

That’s a subtle difference, but it is a difference.

In any case, this is a feature that many many people have been asking for since echo first came out, and I think it’s nice to see it. :sunglasses:

Can see Guard Plus being a US-only thing for at least a year, if not forever. Shame

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Excited about the Eero announcement. I am due for an upgrade, glad I held off.

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Hmmmm


Ring Car Alarm will require connectivity via Amazon Sidewalk, the low-bandwidth, and free wireless network protocol that Ring’s parent company is set to take live sometime later this year.

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Am I the only one getting a weird uncanny valley vibe from the new echo show 10? To me, it looks like a fat little malicious robot. Something from the Dark Side in Star Wars.

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I just can’t do it! LMAO! Really like WTF?..That thing is butt ass ugly and I don’t like it at all that its following you around. What if I need to pop off screen to dig in my nose? Nope. I just ran through all of the products and I am going to have to pass on all.

The drone caught my eyes but then, I remembered, I have 9 Blink Cameras (that’s a whole other story) and the entire house (inside and outside) is covered outside of the bedrooms and bathrooms.

I wonder what the sound quality is for the new dots


I hate that they didn’t make an upgraded Echo Sub. I really liked those but they are gone bye bye now.

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People with pets will not like the drones. It will frighten some pets and others will chase the drones. Or the occasional dog that barks at it.

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Yeah, but again that’s what they said about the robot vacuums and they’ve ended up being really popular.

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I think the announcements were fun! I don’t currently have a need for anything, but I can already imagine using a few of the products in the future.

The drone is especially hilarious to me, but also an extremely interesting “first step”.
I imagine a future where “Alexa, can you please bring me a spoon” is a reality. Where the Fire TV remote has a little signal and the drone can locate it, pick it up, and fly it to me. We don’t just overnight into the world of WALL-E - we get there one innovation at a time.

Also pretty pumped for the new Fire TV UI and super duper hopeful for a new Cubelexa soon!

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This video is HILARIOUS! My dogs quickly got use to our two Samsung Vacs. However, I’ve had to fix both at least 4 times each for various reasons. Damn things just keep breaking.

I am sooooooooo into RC stuff though!

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Some articles to add


The video about the drone is funny, but can you see a real life use case? Anybody can hear a drone flying around a house, it will not scare anyone. And just look at the video, and raise up your hand if your house is that steril clean everywhere
 Have they ever thought of papers, mail, etc in a house? It will blow everything


That is really creepy
 the comment from the author is fair enough.

I think it is time to re-watch one of the X-Files episodes from Season 11.

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Another Ring product
 Ring Mailbox Sensor


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And also uses Sidewalk.