Another gadget- but this one is really clever!
To prove to my detractors that I can talk about more than Safefill and Solar panels!! Now, I'm not sure whether to put this in this section as it may not save you money but it uses so little electricity and also enables you to access more than 40,000,000 tracks of music so no more taking CDs on holiday, fumbling around with the radio in the car etc- now, the world of popular music is at my finger tips- or rather my voice. I took it to the caravan this morning while I did a few jobs and played what I wanted and the amps never moved!
Having discovered it almost by accident while surfing the Amazon website, and learning about it on YouTube, I decided to buy one and to say I'm impressed with the technology would be an understatement. I am of course talking about the Echo Dot by Amazon.
No doubt some of you have heard of it and some of you will own one so this is not directed at you but for those who have heard of it but don't know what it does or those who have never heard of it, - listen up.
Firstly, and most importantly, to use echo dot you need data on your phone or on a mobile myfi device. I don't have much data per month on my phone so at the moment, my preferred method is to take my EE myfi unit which does the job nicely. Echo dot basically is a voice activated device which, set up correctly will serve your every desire......, well, not every one but will certainly make life easier. Having got your echo dot to recognise and lock on to a wifi source the fun starts. Firstly, there are, if you sign up to Amazon Music,(£3.99 a month) 40 million tracks to go at. It will tell you the news, give you reminders in human voice, and so many other things through the app that you load on to your phone. On long journeys I only have to say "Alexa, read 'The Green Mile' " and off she will go reading an audible book(as long as it's in your library). She will remember where she got to last time as well! "Alexa, what's the weather like in London?" "Alexa, what's the time" etc etc and just for example. All done via BT to the car speakers. Get bored with that and it's "Alexa, play tracks from Celina Dion" and like magic it's playing. Alexa, as you may have guessed is the wake up word for it- I nearly said "her" then. You can ask it to tell you a joke even and so many other things I won't cover - you'll have to discover it for yourselves . Although to me, it's invaluable in the car, in the caravan it's just as good. You can get it to pair with Bluetooth Speakers just by asking it to do so- what a bit of kit! Again, it's all about making life more pleasant and using milliamperes to do it. Hope I haven't upset anyone - I probably have😂😂😂
Comments
-
I think ive seen it on tv , i ignored it because it looked to "technological" for the likes of mr bc and myself
0 -
Don't be put off bc. Very easy to set up- virtually does it itself. It's great for so many things. The biggest ones for me is that it does everything automatically within the car infotainment system of the car by voice which allows eyes and hands to be where they should whilst driving and, when we are on the van, as we are non EHU, uses so little battery power to entertain with music, or listening to the news etc.
0 -
Also consider the offer on at the moment with EE, 6 months free Apple Music and free data while playing the music. Music can be downloaded to play off line.
After the 6 months the price is £9.99. But of course you can cancel prior to that
Also for those going abroad..... I rang EE customer services and they stated the free data is included abroad as well so it would not come out of the data allowance. ( edit.....the terms and conditions on EE say the opposite so I'm not sure, they state it comes out of allowance. So I need to check again )
And it will play through the echo dot
0 -
Thanks David. That a good offer by EE. It's just a matter of finding the deals. Data is not cheap but deals can be found. To play music takes very little data. Streaming films and videos takes more but if you had say 10 gig per month on your phone plan, There would be no problem playing music on board. It's the tiny amount of battery power it takes to do it that I like- no more running the radio which can be a drain on the battery. The echo dot certainly adds to the on board experience!
0 -
Just checked online and any data used abroad would come out of the allowance on the contract. It would not be free. Info from customer services was incorrect.
Nothing wrong with the wireless but these music sites do offer a fantastic range of any music on demand.
0 -
Indeed! I only know of one station which is not dominated by incessant music .... and I even have to turn that one off when certain 'comedy' programs come on
0 -
Well this is 'wireless' easy. It's the saving on the batteries that I was keen on. Radios in vans I understand use a fair bit where this uses literally milliamps. But it's not just a music player, it's far more than that. The Alexa app will show you just how wide ranging it is from tide times to jokes, from distances to calculator. Loads of stuff.
0 -
There are various music etc streaming services available. I use Spotify.
The drawback however is that they all need a reasonably fast internet or 4G connection. On a caravan site, using the site wifi for this purpose might be considered bad ettiquette and many sites don't have 4G ...
0 -
+1
0 -
If there is a 3/4G signal you can also use it to stream the 'Wireless' through an app. Classics FM in our case. It does not use much data unlike video. The small Bluetooth Bose speaker we have gives amazing reproduction for its size.
0 -
No reason on the better provided for sites with gold ratings and probably some silver. Music streaming does not use that much bandwidth. It is video and things like face time that are the problem. However, on the lower rated bronze sites you may experience some problems. The CC reckon they are bringing in content filtering, so if it becomes a problem I assume you won't be able to stream music. Personally I think more of a problem bandwidth wise, are all the junk emails with lots of photos, many of which originate from the CC😱
1
