Teach Alexa to take actions based on your feelings

Have you thought about teaching Alexa to take actions based on how you feel?

For example, tell Alexa you are too hot or cold and Alexa will adjust your thermostat accordingly. Or tell Alexa is too dark or too bright or to make it brighter/darker in one room and have Alexa adjust the light level to your liking?

And best of all, what if you could tell Alexa you want to take an action some minutes later, not immediately as the command is given? Hmmm…what do you think?

Poll time :smile:

  • Teaching Alexa to read my mind and to delay actions is awesome
  • Teaching Alexa is not so cool, but delaying actions is
  • Delaying actions is not cool, but teaching Alexa is
  • I don’t really care for either, I like Alexa to just follow my commands.

0 voters

I’m thinking that the more conversational we can have Alexa the better… I like the idea of telling her that it’s too dark and she turns up the lights… or that I’m cold and she turns up the heat…

instead of telling her to turn up the lights or the heat.

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I’m thinking this would require a whole new order of complexity. You’re sitting in the living room, you say “Alexa it’s too dim in here”, and Alexa does…???

Alexa would somehow have to know all the lighting devices in that room with that particular Echo. Can she find that out for herself? How? If not, you now have to teach her that. Then you manage that, good enough. Now say the same thing, and does Alexa turn ALL the devices in the room up? Or just a few?

You see… you end up in a four-minute conversation with Alexa, just to get the reading lamp turned up a bit so you can do your crossword puzzle.

While that might have a certain ‘cool’ factor about it, for these first-gen devices I’m content with being specific in defining my groups and issuing my commands. “Alexa, turn up the corner lamp” is far more succinct than having an extended conversation.

And we’re I programming Alexa I would be sorely tempted to, upon hearing someone say “I’m cold”, have her reply “It’s the holiday season - go put on that ugly sweater that’s been hiding in your closet” :wink:

actually it would not have to be a long conversation… teaching her what devices are in the room… and saying Alexa, it is too dark in the living room… and she raises the lights by 30%…
and she responds… Ok, is it bright enough now?

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You just need to tell ‘her’ what ‘here’ means, remember it doesn’t see you :smile: only hears what you have to say…

That’s up to you, if you want the bedroom lights, Alexa would assume you want them ALL. but if you want her to operate a specific light such as bedroom laps, then you need to tell Alexa that…it could be as easy as teaching a kid to understand what you mean when you mean it. This is the amazing thing about what Amazon created. It gives you flexibility.

Is too dark in the bedroom vs. The bedroom lamps are too bright!

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‘Here’ will vary by Echo. If you have four of them in your home, you’ll have to somehow train each to know that ‘here’ means something different in THIS room than in THAT room.

Don’t get me wrong here… or here. :slight_smile: I am certainly hoping that AI gets to that place, sooner rather than later. But if it’s about priority, I would far rather see amazon and google focus first on voice biometrics to establish/enhance security than on ‘tricks’ like responding to "“I’m cold” by initiating a conversation.

Btw, I’m now up to five Dots. 2 bedrooms, basement, living room, kitchen/dining room. I’m about to install Hue in the bathroom with the hot tub, but if I need to use a Dot in there it will be moved there from a bedroom in that moment rather than permanent.

I have a dot/echo in each room (4 bedrooms, garage, living, dining and kitchen) and all I have to say is…it’s too cold in the Livingroom or too hot Downstairs and the magic happens. Alexa shuts smart vents in unoccupied rooms and turns up AC /heat pump to make the room we are in more comfortable…

No more “you are in auto mode attempting 65 degrees” when I said to set the heating to 72…

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It’s not Here or Here…

it’s…

Alexa, tell Home it’s too cold in the living room

Me: Alexa, I’m hungry.

Alexa: I’ll order 6 large pizzas from Dominos.

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It’s scary how many people want to teach Alexa to be psychic…loool

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mine already does that!

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Do you have a daughter named Alexa, by any chance?!?

LOL… nope… daughters are Keona and Moira… I have a son named Alexander

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What I am after before stuff like this is to have multiple commands recognised in a single utterance. So I can say alexa turn on the living room lights and set heating to 23 degrees and have her do both things at once.

The other stuff is nice bit that needs Amazon to do a whole more stiff around tieing echo devices to groups of smart home devices

That can be done, but you need to maintain two lists of commands and two for devices and build your utterances with primary command and primary device plus secondary command and secondary device. Then split the actions in ST…Let us get out Echosistant 3 and I’ll show you how to do it. Is actually fairly easy…

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I’d like to have the ability to tell Alexa to turn something on in X minutes.

Yup I know you can get it working, but what I think we need is to have alexa listen for and as a secondary trigger after the alexa trigger.

That way it doesn’t need to be programmed by each skill and you could get her to do 3 things with different skills etc. All with the same utterance

That’s a very interesting idea. You still need to use primary and secondary commands and devices if you want one utterance but, you have a point here…Extending the time out, should give you a chance to take a break. So you’d say…turn the light pause for a few seconds then say AND set the temperature to x degrees…

Your wish will come true sooner than you think! :smile:

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