You’ll need to plug in a good set of speakers
By Lawrence I. Charters
January 1, 2017
We purchased an Echo Dot to evaluate it as an assistive device. A great many people (chiefly those with disabilities, and the elderly) could benefit from a device that can provide basic information through a simple question, or turn on or off a device through a voice command. Could the Echo Dot meet such needs?
Want to know the capital of Bulgaria? The outside temperature? The weather at that critical soccer match in Paris? Alexa knows the answer. You have to follow a fairly simple syntax (long, meandering questions, or compound questions consisting of a bunch of nested conditions, will fail), and you must precede any answer by addressing the device as “Alexa.” But generally speaking, the Echo Dot more than adequately handles such basic tasks.
Getting the Echo Dot to turn on or off devices is a bit more complicated. First, the device has to have a mechanical on or off switch; devices that use capacitance switches won’t work. Second, it has to make sense to turn the device on or off by a voice command. Turning a traditional land-line telephone on or off makes no sense, nor does it make sense to turn on or off a buzz saw by voice command. Second, you need a network-addressable adapter to plug the device in. These are generally inexpensive, and Amazon sells a wide selection. But generally speaking, if you just want to turn on a floor lamp, or some other simple action, the Echo Dot (and the required power adapter for the device) work well.
It goes without saying that you will also need a full-time Internet connection, as the Echo Dot gets its intelligence from talking to Amazon’s servers which not only turn your voice commands into something computers understand but also provide the responses to your commands. You also will need an Amazon account, and either an iPhone or iPad or an Android wireless device.
About the only downside: if you want high fidelity music streaming from your Amazon account, you’ll need to plug in a good set of speakers. The internal speaker is OK for most things, but not for music. Fortunately, the Echo Dot includes a mini-phono plug, so any powered speakers normally associated with computers or laptops should do nicely.
Update
To address some recent security concerns, I recommend you set up the Echo Dot the same way I did: 1) set a PIN number so that no one can accidentally order something from Amazon using the Echo Dot; 2) do not share your contact information with the Echo Dot. Depending on the confidentiality of your schedule, you may also want to decline sharing access to your electronic calendar.