5 Cool Things The Amazon Echo Can Do In Your Knoxville Home

A few weeks ago, we covered some smart home gadgets for your Knoxville home.

One of the gadgets we covered was the Amazon Echo. In this post, we’ll cover 5 cool things that the Amazon Echo can do in your Knoxville home.

Play Music

One of the coolest things that the Amazon Echo can do in your Knoxville home is control music.  You’ll love that the Echo has a crisp, immersive sound, thanks to its 360º omni-directional audio.  The Echo can also connect to a bluetooth speaker, should you prefer to use a speaker of your own.

The best part? The Echo works with a wide variety of platforms, including the following:

• Pandora
• Prime Music
• Spotify Premium
• Amazon Music
• Pandora
• iHeartRadio
• Audible

With so many variation, you’ll have complete hands-free control of the music in your home. You can request (almost) any song you want. Or, you can select a channel for your overall mood. You can also request that Alexa skip songs or turn the volume up. This is one of the coolest features about Alexa. She offers an easy, convenient way to listen to your favorite music.

Control Smart Home Features

The Amazon Echo is also able to control smart home features in your Knoxville home. You can dim your lights or turn up the heat with one simple voice command.

Here are just a few of the smart home devices Alexa can work with:

• Philips Hue Lights
• Belkin WeMo
• Sensi
• Ecobee
• Nest Thermostat

The Echo works with many different smart home devices and is constantly adding new smart home devices to its list of capabilities. If you current list of smart home devices doesn’t yet work with Alexa, it probably will in the very near future.

Alexa can work with any of the features that are part of the smart home devices. She can dim your lights, turn your thermostat down, or turn  your lights off. If you want to make these features available in multiple rooms in your house, you can get additional Amazon Echo Dots that are a fraction of the price and interact exactly like your Echo device does.

Read To You

The Echo also integrates with Audible, so that your Echo can read to you. With the simple control of your voice, you can pick up on a book where you left off or you can put a time on how long she will read to you. Alexa can also go backwards or forward in a book if you need her to.

Another cool feature is that Alexa can read Wikipedia articles. If you’re in the middle of doing something and want to know more about a famous person or event, Alexa can look them up on Wikipedia and read the article to you. No more having to read the tedious articles yourself, Alexa will do it for you.

Tell You What You Need To Know

The Amazon Echo can also provide you with useful information at your request. This can be particularly helpful if you’re in the middle of doing something and want to know a simple fact, like what the weather will be or when the game will be on. When you’re in a room with an Amazon Echo, this saves you the time of looking for a computer of looking it up on your smart phone.

Here are just some the things that Alexa can tell you about:

• The weather
• The time
• Commute time
• The latest news

There’s many more things that Alexa can look up for you. These are just a few of the popular items. She saves you the time of looking it up yourself, particularly if you’re just about to leave the house and need some useful information.

Help You Cook

Finally, another fun feature the Echo can provide for you in your Knoxville home is to be a cooking assistant. Alexa is able to do many things for you while you cook.

Here are just a few of the skills she is able to provide:

• Timer
• Conversions
• Reading recipes (if you own the book)

If you hate setting the time on the oven, Alexa can do it for you with simple voice command. Or, if you’re wonder how many quarts there are in a cup, she can also provide you with that conversion. She’s a helpful hands-free assistant in the kitchen.

Do you have a smart assistant in your home? Do you think Amazon Alexa could be an asset in your home? Sound off in comments.

If there is anything we can help you with, please do not hesitate to contact us. Rick can be reached at 865-696-9002 or via email at [email protected]. Kati can be reached at 865-696-1888 or via email at [email protected].