Hi Greg, It connects to your phone (an app) and operates by voice. I am mostly probably like your friend and use it to listen to music, talk radio, weather information, general information (like asking it some random question like how old is Elton John), etc. I can also ask it to add certain things to my grocery list, which can also be accessed on my phone. But since I need other people to do 100% things for me (including picking up my phone, because I just use a Bluetooth to operate it) I haven't done much else with it... yet.
I had to purchase something called a "Wink Hub" to tell it to turn my bedroom light on and off by voice. The thing is... I had to also purchase a certain light bulb (from Amazon) so that it will understand/connect to my app. You are right however that it does. Much much much much more. It will operate anything in your house by voice, BUT you have to own your own home and purchase whatever is needed for any particular thing to operate it by voice. Say, for example, you want to open your blinds by voice... you have to buy something to connect to your blinds so that it will recognize your command. Or it will open your garage door or do whatever. Now that I am on the other side of the country and saying my live-in caregiver has something go wrong with her and she is unreachable... my niece looked up how, through my Amazon Echo, I might be able to do that. And she found out how. It is through something called IFFT. I will go into that below. All you have to do is to a Google search on "What all does Amazon Echo do?" Although Greg... I think that you already know that anything you want to know can be found through a simple Google search. :-) ALSO, there is something else out on the market that does exactly the same thing and it is called IFFT but it operates through the Amazon Echo. Whatever you ask Amazon Echo to do... it is called a recipe. There are two recipes I use through IFFT that are commands that will go to my nieces smart phone to first call my live-in caregiver's cell phone in her bedroom. And if she is unresponsive, I give it another command, where buying my niece will know to call the local ambulance or police or whatnot. To learn about what IFFT does. Just click here and it will tell you: *https://ifttt.com/* <https://ifttt.com/> I hope this helps! ~Lori On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 11:28 PM, greg <[email protected]> wrote: > How does the Amazon Echo work? > If I bought one, how hard is it to connect to and control your TV? Or can > it? > Would it control every option or just on/off? > Ceiling Light? > Do you have to buy a receiver for each object? > > Friend bought one but only uwes it to control music. I thought it did more. > > Greg > -- "Petting, scratching and cuddling a dog could be soothing to the mind and heart and deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer." ~Dean Koontz
