Synthesis
(The Viking AKA "Holy Crap You're a Giant!")
1
Technology is so freakin’ cool!
I got bored last night. I decided to use Tasker and set up the WiFi hot spot on my phone to automatically turn on whenever the phone detects a Bluetooth connection from the radio in the van. When the Bluetooth connection shuts off, the hot spot shuts off.
What does this do for me, you might ask?
I also installed an Amazon Echo Dot in the van, plugged it into the charger and plugged that into one of the van’s charging ports that are controlled by the ignition key. I then linked the Echo Dot to the radio by Bluetooth.
Now, whenever I climb into the van, my phone hot spot turns on, the Echo boots up and greets me with a cheery “Hello” message, and I have voice control over music/news/traffic updates/weather in the van. In addition, I can use voice to send text notifications to friends/family when I’m on my way, control the lights in the house as I pull up in the driveway, open the garage door, etc. All without taking my hands from the wheel or eyes off the road.
This morning, I told the house to shut off all of the lights after I backed out of the driveway.
What a great time to be a geek!
Now, to figure out how to do this in the wife’s car. She doesn’t have Bluetooth and replacing the radio in her car isn’t worth it.
Ouch, figured you were still on a grandfathered plan. I pay $8/month each for two phones, 4G but only 100min/text/MB. Plenty for my wife and I for general usage, not so much for streaming on the road though. I’m cheap…
Synthesis
(The Viking AKA "Holy Crap You're a Giant!")
7
Heh. Yeah, we “lowered” our bill with the most recent re-up with Sprint… Reduced the cost of the phone purchase, but they still found a way to tack on fees. Eh. Either way, with the unlimited plan I no longer have to worry about my son pushing us over the 40 GB limit on the previous plan like he did three times this summer… Even after a stern talking to and losing his phone for a month for it.
Anyway, Alexa in the car is pretty bad-ass. Have to see what the data usage looks like with a normal day’s worth of streaming, etc.
I was thinking of the automatic for more along the lines of the integration. I’m working on something right now for my truck with Sync 3 to hopefully eventually extend my smart home. Not sure what vehicles you have but using echo is another nice idea.
If your phone has NFC, then you can get NFC tags. They will have your phone preform commands that you program into it.
Synthesis
(The Viking AKA "Holy Crap You're a Giant!")
11
It does. But it doesn’t cost me anything to use Tasker (already bought and paid for).
But, for someone else who has the majority of the hardware already, NFC is a very good alternative to Tasker to get the same functionality.
