Amazon Echo - Who's Using It?

I just put in 3 different Amazon units in the home. All the different types. I'm really interested in playing around with the video units and see if I can get some cameras and automation going on these. Alexa is pretty awesome and with Ring coming in play, they could really change the home security market IMO.

Just don't let your kids train it to burp or release gas during a meal time or set stupid alarms for random hours of the early morning. I should be sleeping right now, but Alexa just yelled at me to get up and said "Play that funky music right..."

I have my house saturated in Echo devices due to the low cost of Echo Dots during Black Friday. We use it frequently for everything from controlling the TV to lighting.

Honestly, I cannot foresee any usefulness in security with this product aside from residential.  Alexa has the most applicability in the consumer market.  The AV industry seems to be a good fit with Alexa.  There are folks on Linkedin who are trying to push Alexa for business, which makes sense in board rooms or other applications.  

We have them and I am expanding with Sonos. The kids love it, we've been able to introduce them to a wide range of music. When things get crazy we put on classical music to help everyone chill out. 

I also integrated it with the security and home automation system so it's nice to be able to control everything. When I walk into the kitchen I tell her to turn the lights on, I'm too lazy to go around to all 8 light switches to turn the lights on to cook. When I want them off they're off. I can do it from anywhere in the house. 

I'm not sure what the future will hold for technology like this. Right now I see a lot of uses in homes with automation and turning the security system on and locking the doors. If Alexa were built into a normal smart TV I could see it being useful for showing the video surveillance system on the house. Tell her to pull up the driveway camera while you're watching TV and waiting for the pizza guy or the kids to get off the bus. 

I don't know if I would put one in a business, too much confidential information get's shared in our office to trust it. Maybe someday. 

I use it Google and Amazon at home to control my Lutron lighting.  It makes it so convenient to control lights and make sure everything is off at bed time.  We can walk into a room with your hands full and still be able to turn the lights on, love it. 

I would like a phone app that can broadcast Alexa commands at 40Khz, so when I have dinner at a friend's house I can totally disrupt his "home automation". In this app I would like to type what I want to say. 

The problem I have with some of my friends is their introduction to layman's laziness technology. They are good at describing how their system works but when questioned they do not understand it. They are constantly informed by youtube, facebook tech gurus that are only reading datasheets for dummies. 

I would like the tools to test what frequencies above 20Khz that these home monitoring products are able to monitor.

"Alexa, what is your owners IQ?".

I own the Echo Show and have two speakers, its mostly just used to play music around the house, turn the lights on/off and run the Roomba. It is really convenient just walking in the house and telling it what lights I want on or off. I did add an EZVIZ camera to it but not for security purposes, it's pointed at my oil guage in the basement so I can just walk past the Show and ask it to "show me the basement camera" and see where my oil is at.

I've tried to add Hikvision cameras to it but it did not work.

No, thank you. The idea of an always-on microphone makes me nervous. 

My kids...."Alexa, play Ed Sheeran"