Has ST had any input on this, do they plan to write code for ST & Echo to work together.
FYI, the Echo is $129 today for Amazon’s Prime Day. $50 off!
Just impulse bought the Echo for $129 (sold out now for that price), so now I am subscribing to this thread 
$129 is no longer available… waitlist full, whatever that means…
Yeah I was lucky to get it, from what I can tell it lasted about 15 minutes. I was on SlickDeals trying to find out why it was not posted, speculation was that Amazon changed their mind, and all of the sudden it went live. I bought first and will probably pay the price at home later
Just out of curiosity, what does everyone use it for currently? I bought it strictly with the hope of ST integration but will need something to hold me over…lol
Great progress so far @zpriddy, I have an old PI that I will have to re-purpose for this and can’t wait to see what all I can do with it.
I’m currently listening to one of my Audible books while I eat lunch in my home office. It reads me news in the morning when I wake up. It plays music for me when I work. My four year old has perfected asking her to tell a joke and play “Who let the dogs out” (I’m not so happy about that development)
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I use it for light control of lights in 8 rooms (GE Links on a Hue bridge). It’s our main light control now, everybody uses it.
Also use it everyday for Flash Briefing (selected news), weather, music. My housemate checks traffic for his commute. Stuff like “When do the Giants play next?” My housemate has his Google calendar on it. (I use my apple watch instead.) I listen to audiobooks.
very high xAF, keeps getting better. 
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Primarily voice / hands-free control of lighting via Hue Bridge emulation + SmartThings. So I need a second one for the downstairs room!
I wish it had announcement and generic speaker capability, like Sonos.
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Just pair it to a PC and play whatever you want…
I am excited to say that I am one step closer to making my code available and being able to host it as a service. I now have a better form and definitely a more secure way to authenticate your echo to SmartThings.
Each time that you require interaction with the web interface (authentication or updates to your SmartThings system) it generates a new 10 digit - onetime use code for you to identify yourself to the web interface, after that transaction it is then cleared.
For the beta testers this will be pushed out tomorrow… But there shouldn’t be any reason to have to re-authenticate (as long as i don’t screw up the push)
Again, If any one wants to beta test let me know! I would be happy to send you instructions how to connect to my hosted server.
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Hmmm… I’ll have to do more testing with Bluetooth Echo pairing. I didn’t get much out of the experience for some reason, but I don’t recall.
Thanks for the reminder.
I would love to give this a go if you don’t mind.
Thank you
Does anyone know if echo will work in Canada?
Yes… But the “wake word” is “Alexa, hoser! ... What's the weather, eh?”. 
Couldn’t resist. Sorry.
It may not check IP Address location (and it requires an Amazon account), but I don’t think it is sold outside USA at this time.
I do not have any experience with Amazon’s VR engine handling accents, but the engines I am familiar with do not seem to exhibit degraded performance based on accents. We had a Hungarian doctor with a very thick accent ask the same question in a Voice/Medical Records demo. I cringed. It liked him better than it likes me and I am from the midwest.
I’m quadriparetic and have used a lot of voice recognition technology over the years. Many systems have trouble with accents, although the more sophisticated have “training modes” where they can eventually learn your individual patterns. I use Siri a lot, but both it and Google have trouble understanding me on days when my speech is slurred.
The Echo is amazing. We’ve done no training with it, but it has no trouble understanding anybody who comes through the house, including several people with noticeable accents. It’s also been fine with the changes my voice goes through.
So I am one step closer to making this available for all! 
I want to slowly have people start to use it just to make sure I dont overload the very small server I have running it. So if you would like to try it out let me know and Ill send you a link to it…
Done:
- Better Web Interface
- Better Security
- Better Error Checking
- Automated Sample Generator
- Switch Control
- Mode Control
My ToDo:
- Add support for HelloHome
- Add support for dimmers
- Add support for hues
- Add support for asking questions:
- Alexa, ask SmartThings if any Windows are open?
- Alexa, ask SmartThings if my garage door is open?
- Alexa, ask SmartThings if my locks are locked
- etc…
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Im watching the traffic and to those of you who are testing it and were having issues getting the Alexa ID to register correctly… That was my fault… I was pushing a few changes… But I saw the errors come in… lol
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Should be working better now… I had to add in some better logging… and then I broke the Alexa ID look up function…
Who needed the return statement anyways?
@zpriddy I’d love to get my hands on your beta. PM me the instructions and I’ll be more than happy to test it out for you