turn on the lights” …turn off the lights” …to brighten my lights” …to dim my lights” …stop flashing lights to music”* …start flashing lights to music”* #4 – Controlling your TV with your Echo Dot is awesome Filed under: Extreme laziness / awesomeness So you got yourself a brand new Echo. Ready to start yelling at your shiny new toy? We'll walk you through its setup, share the most useful Alexa Skills, and give you a look at its full range of capabilities. (It can do more than you might realize.) Trivia hero is awesome. Give it a try. #2 – Set useful timers and alarms Filed under: Practical stuff It never gets old using your voice to turn on lights when you enter a room. And aside from the normal uses, there’s plenty of more adventurous things your Dot can do when it comes to your lighting.

This 100% voice controlled general knowledge trivia challenge which you can play on your own, or against other people. You’ll be asked a series of questions and it’s definitely cool using your voice rather than a screen to play a game show. Like all the things to do in this guide, Trivia Hero is free. When you think ‘smart home’, you might think that this is gonna get expensive! Well, you might be pleased to know that getting your Echo dot to talk to your lights isn’t as costly as you might think. With some products, like smart plugs, weighing in for around a tenner. If you’re a smart home newbie, maybe start with a smart plug from Wemo or TP-Link. They are low-cost, low-stakes entry points that let you turn whatever’s plugged into them on and off with a yelp.

Customer reviews

Setting alarms on your Dot, or simply getting your Echo to let you know when a timer has expired will save your butt more times than you can shake a smart speaker at. Unless you’re captain super-organized, your Dot might just save you some of these hassle points.

Hey, most of us love shouting at the TV anyway – it might as well actually do something. Many modern TVs already have voice control but if you’re looking to link everything together with your Echo Dot in your smart home, the little smart speaker is extremely good at this job. One of the best things to do with your Echo Dot 2023 is still getting it to control things in your smart home. The smaller dot works exactly the same as the larger units and there’s all kinds of things alexa can control. I love the way it is smoothly integrated to my iPhone and iPad and router. Brilliant sound very echoing haha love it, when I play musics while cooking and or setting reminders and alarms. Especially it wakes you with welcome message in the morning which appears so positive to start the day.I love that I can “Drop In” to the second echo device in my son’s room to have a two-way chat with him from either the first echo device, or from the Alexa app on my iPhone.

With 4 far-field microphones, Alexa can hear you from across the room. And with compatible Echo devices in different rooms, you can fill your whole home with music. Instantly drop in on other rooms in your home or make an announcement to every room with an Echo. Make calls and send messages between supported Echo devices and the Alexa App. Thankfully, the ever-useful Dot is way more forgiving with updates than some other technology companies I could mention. This guide will have stuff you can do whether you’re the proud owner of a 1st, 2nd or 3rd Gen Dot. And we’ll be looking at things to try, interesting things Alexa can do and much more. #1 – Your Dot is great at playing games (like Trivia hero) As the video below explains, you can control both smart and non-smart TVs with Alexa, with the smart kind being a lot simpler (and free!) to do.

Do I need the latest Dot to do this?

I can automate my smart devices such as my power plugs and lights to turn on and off etc using my voice, or via a custom routine and schedule. You can even dim the smart lights or change their colours on voice command after you link them up to your smart light’s online account. No more legging it downstairs to see if that extra hour has actually turned your dinner into charcoal The echo dot is a good looking device that blends in well with modern furniture and interior design. The idea of using our voices to play games is still fairly new, and the games available for your Echo Dot are improving every day and getting more interesting as they go. While the Dot can do loads of useful stuff, we’ll get to that in a minute. There are games that are highly suited to Alexa, more than they are games consoles, tablets or computers.

All these just for very low price and especially it’s so compact that plug and play is excellent for portability including into my carrrr.You can also buy an adapter or an extra hub to control your TV with any Alexa, if you really want to get into it. The speaker clarity is better on the google home mini. The echo dot sounds deeper and more muffled, at times it sounds like mumbling when listening to the news podcasts whereas the google mini speaks the words very clearly.