One year with Alexa

Having used Amazon’s Alexa now for over a year, and also integrated it with Samsung’s SmartThings, my Sonos, and a Harmony Hub (attempted), I thought now would be a good point to review how well it handles my daily Use Cases.

Let’s start with what I have in the apartment. My Apartment has two Amazon Echo Dots, each located so that you are within earshot from all but the farthest reaches of the apartment. The Smart Home devices I have connected in some manner to the Echo, include Phillips Hue bulbs, A Logitech Harmony Hub, one Sonos Play 1 (non Alexa), And a Samsung SmartThings Hub connecting up motion sensors, temperature sensors, light sensors, open and close sensors and integrated with the Hue Hub, Sonos and Harmony.

Now for Alexa. After one year what do I find most annoying? Well a few things irk both my partner and me. Probably the worst is the fact that Alexa fails to understand us at least 20-30% of the time. My understanding when I purchased the Echo was that Alexa was a learning AI, which also as time passed learnt specifics around your pronunciation. Truthfully I cannot say I have seen evidence of this. Especially considering that 90% of the time we use the same commands over and over again. The use case for turning on and controlling lighting becomes useless when you need to repeat the command three times, making it simpler to pick up your phone or walk to a switch! In fact it got so annoying that I have purchased Hue switches and placed them around the apartment. Second most annoying is that the commands are very specific. Having coded a helper function for SmartThings and Alexa I see that the command structure is very rigid. Not really “fuzzy” or intelligent. For example unless you tell (i.e. Code or Configure) Alexa to understand, that Guest Bedroom Lights are the same as Guest Room Lights, she will not for example ask you if the device is not found if you actually meant something similar and then add that to her vocabulary. On the contrary she just says device is not found (or something to that effect)… over and over again. So you have to go in and code or configure every permutation.

I also find the skills very annoying. I don’t want to ask Alexa to ask or tell another helper to do something. For example, I coded a helper skill to provide more integration with SmartThings than the standard Skill allows. I called this helper skill “Gideon”. Now when I want Gideon to do something I have to say something like “Alexa, tell Gideon it’s Bedtime”. If I just said “Alexa it’s Bedtime” she would not understand. Or I have to say something like “Alexa, ask ‘skill x’ to do ‘y’”. This is just not convenient, in my world, from a Smart Home AI.

Skills are another thing, there are loads and loads out there, but I am yet to find more than a handful of much use. Most are just play things, a little fun that gets very boring after a while, or the ones that could potentially be good have so much missing that they just become annoying. Logitech’s Skill for its Harmony Hub is one such skill. Annoying beyond words the last time I tried it. One a completely separate thread, I will review the Harmony Hub later, but in my view it is useless – do not waste your money on it. Especially to integrate with Alexa. It needs specific devices to make the use case work well and due to limitations I find I use it 0%.

Alexa also uses Bing as the search engine, and comparing using Google Assistant and Alex and asking a straight forward question, Google Assistant responds and Alexa just does not know. An example I used was “Alexa/ Google what are the opening times for Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen”. I think the search and answer capability that Alexa has is very very limited.

So what about as a speaker, well I have a Dot. I find the music underwhelming and not something I want to listen to. Maybe I have gotten used to my Sonos, but I wouldn’t want to use it apart from maybe in a smaller room. So speaker wise for music not a go.

After one year, would I buy another? No, probably not. It is a novelty. But for daily use it is not there yet and I think one being the cost it is, and having at least a couple strewn around I would rather spend that money on something more useful and pleasurable. 

Alexa, how useful are you?

Cool little gadget…. A lot of hype. And not sure how much value it still adds… but at 50 Sterling Pounds it is a cool little gadget. And I do like my gadgets.

So why do I say I’m not sure how much value it adds? Well for one thing, voice recognition is good but still has quite a few faults. Especially if your accent is not quite American or proper English orr one of the dialects they have obviously trained Alexa for. So my accent is a mixture of various accents from all over the world. I enunciate, but sometimes I don’t pronounce certain words exactly as Alexa would expect… and off she goes doing something else.

Another bug bear I have is that Amazon have chosen to use Bing as the search engine of choice and sometimes the simplest things I can ask “Ok Google”, Alexa has trouble finding. This is seriously frustrating knowing that the answer is there from Google and if I was to move away from Alexa it would most likely be for this reason mainly if Googles offering comes to Europe soon.

Saying this Alexa still is a pretty cool toy J

Her integration skills with a lot of home automation gadgets is pretty good though limited for the key ones I use such as Smartthings and the Sonos. For example I would really like to be able to ask Alexa if the front door is closed and for her to check with Smartthings and respond. Or for me to ask “Alexa, are all the windows closed” or “Alexa, are lights in the Living room still on” or “Alexa, is the TV in my sons room still on”. And at the moment all you can do is ask to turn stuff on and off. Sonos integration is also limited and via IFTTT and Smartthings, but I hear this may change soon.

So hopefully in this year there will be more skills added that will make the Echo Dots I have more than just cool toys.

Samsung's Smartthings after eight months

It’s been nearing 8 months now since I first installed Smartthings in my home in the Netherlands. It’s not perfect by any means but it’s been sufficiently good that I’ve bought a second hub and components for my apartment in Copenhagen.

I guess that means it must be reasonable from my perspective.

The biggest positives I have found with the Smartthings system have been the ease of set-up and the fact that it works with a bunch of the most common smart components.

At home in the Netherlands I have almost every light fixture now moved to the Phillips Hue system and Smartthings so far plays well with this. I’ve also integrated open close sensors from Samsung themselves, Fibaro motion and smoke sensors and motion sensors from Aeontec. There’s a smart plug from Belkin and the Sonos system is also attached and connected up and along with a Siren I can hook up a fairly nice alarm system to give any would be intruder quite a fright.

The apartment in Copenhagen is a little smaller and I’ve include Hue here with just a couple of sensors. But what I have started to use more and more in Copenhagen is the Amazon Echo (Alexa) connected to Smartthings.

Alexa, works with Smartthings but probably the most frustrating things with this is that the voice recognition really uses correct and proper enunciation or using standard names for things – which have obviously been provided more input and variety of pronunciations. For example Alexa will understand almost every time if I say “Alexa turn on the living room lights”. However if I say “Alexa, turn on Mr. Skinny” she won’t understand 50% of the time. So giving your lights and appliances fun names is a little tricky.

Saying that though, I still like the combination and possibilities and have started to experiment adding IFTTT to the mix.

I still think there are quite a few things that Smartthings could do to make integration much better. Especially with appliances such as the Sonos or Robot Vacuums. But saying that there are quite a few user created device handlers from the Smartthings Community that add significant amounts of added functionality to some components. So though officially supported these device handlers and the community is on good reason I stay with Smartthings. For those not comfortable with messing around with device handlers and the like it still offers a good core basic solution I feel for automating your home and when you put it together with systems such as Hue and the Echo is really at this stage pretty good.

I’m still continuing to experiment and add to my installation and plan to integrate a Logitech Harmony Hub, Arlo Pro and trying to figure out a way to establish some sort of Miro Presence Detection so I can start including automation rules for such things as I’m up and about but my partner is still in bed so wake her up in 30 minutes :-D

Will try hard to keep everyone updated on progress here…. but I see I am falling behind on various aspects of my blog,… especially on the promised insights into my move to Copenhagen!

The Bose QC35

New Toy! 

Oooo… first impressions… nice, good quality build, noise suppression is as good as the QC25, but I seem to be getting some breaks in the music from the Bluetooth connection in my phone. But this could be more to do with the Huawei phone I have rather than the headphones (I’ll review that a different time).

It’s only been a week now since I have had the phones. But so far I’ve used them on planes, busy sidewalks and crowded metro’s and they seem good. I haven’t had a chance to try the mic yet in any environment so will probably update on this after a couple of months.

The battery life seems good and the 20 hours billed in the marketing seems to be true.

All in all so far I would recommend this especially for frequent travellers. One of my complaints with most phones was the cable, especially getting long cables tangled on seat handles and in my jacket. This total removes this.

Look for a further more detailed review soon!

The Internet of Things - Nest Thermostat

Just had a Nest Thermostat installed in the house. It's been a few days now. Still early days to tell if it is likely to save more money or energy than a standard thermostat. But what I can say it is pretty cool! I love being able to have the have the ability to turn down the temperature when I am out and have it back on when I return home! It looks pretty cool too :-)

What I am waiting to see is how well it will learn our habits at home and how quickly the house warms up etc and how it will apply this. I'll update here after a couple of months on this front.

One thing I do want to check out is using IFTTT (IF This Then That) to see about incorporating Geo-Fencing for example with the Thermostat.

I am hoping for fairly big things from this and I hope I do not get disappointed like I do normally with so much of today's "advanced" technology.

A month after the Neato

It's been about a month now after I purchased and started using the Neato Robotic Vacuum cleaner. How is it doing? Still fine and I am still very impressed. The little vacuum has significantly reduced the amount of time spent cleaning the floors and the whole apartment just constantly feels cleaner under foot. The only additional cleaning is ones every other week I go round the edges with a normal vacuum cleaner - which takes all of 5-10 minutes.

It's scheduled to run every other day and this keeps the apartment spotless. Very very impressed but little features of the cleaner such as returning to it's base to charge and if not completed it will return and start cleaning from where it left off once fully charged again. It also has managed to get out of some very tight situations all on its' own!

I can highly recommend this little gadget!!! now all I need is a robot mop with all of the same functionality :-)

Avantree Clipper

If you read my previous post on buying the QC25 headphones you will already know that it took me months to decide on those. One of the reasons was whether to go wireless or go for the noise cancelling. This was made difficult as there are no really good quality wireless headphones with noise cancellation that I could find.

In the end I decided on the noise cancellation Bose headphones with the cunning plan that I would make them wireless!

After a little research I found a nice little gadget which you plug your headphones into and they act to make them Bluetooth 4.0 enabled.

They work…. and I am extremely surprised that the sound quality is not degraded! The sound pumping out is on par with them being connected directly to my phone or laptop or TV (any Bluetooth enabled device).

I can also pair the Clipper with 2 devices and switch between them. The device charges off a micro USB cable and on a charge will last up to 6 hours which is more than adequate for my needs. Fantastic! The device is small (see the picture against a UK 1 Penny coin) discrete and appears to be very well made.

If you are interested head on over to Amazon and search for Avantree Clipper.

Bose QuietComfort 25 Headphones

So finally after months of trying on in stores, airports, checking reviews and contemplating I shelled out for a pair of Bose Quitecomfort 25’s. It was the deal at Schiphol Airport that finally swayed me.

I’ve started to write this review in the flight with the headphones on. My first impressions are pretty good.

Bose QC25 Noise Cancelling Headphones

I have a very sensitive area at the top of my head where headphones normally rest and if the phones are not really comfortable I get an annoying headache that means I can’t continue wearing the headphones – no matter how expensive or cheap. For this reason for a very long time I have been sticking to earbuds.

Recently though I have been thinking of going back to full over ear headphones. What took me so long (literally months) to make up my mind? Well most good on ear or over ear phones cost in excess of 100 Euros and recently I have been feeling a little “Scroogish” and the fact that most of these headphones look very plasticy in the harsh light of the shops didn’t help – I just didn’t feel it was justified to spend 200-300 on a pair of headphones that looked like a 30 Euro pair!

Getting back to the QC25’s, I must admit that the Noise cancellation is exceptional. I used to have a pair of beats a couple of years back and these surpass them hands down (btw – I will never ever buy another pair of Beats ever again! The build quality is the most horrible I have ever seen for headphones at this price point). The engine noise of the plane was completely drowned out and the sound quality was good (I’m no audiophile though).

What I did notice was the odd sensation (maybe my sensitive inner ear due to a cold) similar to when your ears get blocked up on a flight when the noise cancellation was activated. I even felt a little nauseas, but then again maybe just me as I get sea sick quite easily and travel sick if I am not driving. I also could hardly hear the crew announcements (could also be a negative). So all in all the noise cancellation and sound quality is superb.

The quality of the unit, though made entirely of plastic seems to be good and looks like it can take some pretty harsh treatment. I’ll update the review after a few weeks of use. As a side note I was considering for a while between the QC25 and the wireless Bluetooth Soundlink Headphones also around the same price. In the end I decided on the wired QC25 – but not sure yet if the cable will get on my nerves – cables of any kind generally tend to bring this out in me.

So for the moment – quietly happy and hopeful that these will not be another quick (269 Euro) hand me downs to my sister J

SiMore - G2 BlueBox Review

So disappointed :-(
I bought this about a month back, as being stupid the last mobile I purchased was not Dual SIM - even after contemplating the need I have for it.

I wanted to be able to have my Dutch and UK mobiles accessible and always on within a single device - basically Dual SIM active as opposed to Dual SIM standby.

So far this is the only device I have found that provides that functionality to mobile devices not having Dual SIM Active capability built in.

I gotta to say though, so far I am not overly impressed. The unit cost 99 Euros and as of this date I've had the following experience;

• You can't tell how much juice is left in the unit until it goes out on you
• Not the easiest to see at a glance if it is on, off
• The build quality is not really fantastic - would expect more for 99 Euros
• Those one time pass  codes that are being so common now for accessing your accounts won't show on the SMS screen in there app
• I sometimes get calls coming through from people who had tried to call me over an hour back
• The app is basic, but if it worked 100% of the time wouldn't be that bad - it does not
• I sometimes send SMS messages that don't get sent, no record and no trace on the phone app.
• The app sometimes says connected to the device, and no calls or SMS are received - until I reboot the device. The only way I figure this out is if I am expecting a message and it never arrives :-/
• The connection on calls has been awful most times even with the unit within a meter. By connection I mean unit to mobile, which uses bluetooth.

All in all so far my thoughts are that the ease of use I wanted and reliability is not there and I would not advise anyone to purchase this device.

Really disappointed, was expecting more at this price - good idea - bad implementation. Next time will look closer into a real Dual SIM Active mobile.....

... I guess you live and learn.... hopefully this will help someone else to make a decision and not be disappointed.