Full transcript of “EVERYTHING You Can Do With The Echo Dot”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 new tech is always a welcome Edition in my house but once I get it set up I don't want to spend days and days figuring out everything I can do with the device I want One Source One document or even one video telling me everything that I need to know well that's what I've done for you in this video so sit back relax and let's find out everything that you can do with the echo dot welcome back to another video if you are new to the channel welcome if you have been around a while you probably know that I cover my fair share of the Amazon ecosystem so if you own any Amazon products or products with Alexa built into it make sure that you are subscribed because I have a lot of cool videos coming up that should help you get the most out of these devices now in this video today I'm going to be
0:46 covering the brand new Echo dot fifth generation but apart from some Hardware changes everything that I talk about in this video is going to apply to older generations of the echo dot so feel free to share this video with any family and friends that you also know who have this this device also as we go through the video I will have broken this video out into chapters so you can skip around and view the things that are most important to you and also leave a comment and let me know what you would like me to dive deeper into now with that said let's dive deeper into everything that you can do with the echo [Music] dot so essentially this is a speaker with the Amazon Alexa Voice Assistant built in and for reference I will be muting this word above so it doesn't
1:31 trigger any of your devices throughout this video however if you have changed your weight work good luck I would go ahead and mute your device now if we take a look at the back of the device we can see a power port and well that's pretty much it gone are the days of having a 3.5 mm Jack for external speakers inside is a 1.73 in front firing speaker on the top of the device there are buttons for mute volume down volume up and an action button for triggering The Voice Assistant now even though you can't see it underneath that mesh covering are going to be small holes for the microphones now on the bottom of the device is the light ring this is used to notify you when your voice assistant is listening but it can also display other colors for example it'll show red if the speaker is muted or yellow if you have a notification the light ring also moves when you're
2:17 turning the volume up and down this will give you some kind of indication on what level that volume is now some additional features inside include Dual Band Wi-Fi Bluetooth for streaming audio from your phone to that speaker or you can connect your Echo dot to an external Bluetooth speaker this device is also compatible with matter now if you are not familiar with matter in a nutshell it is a new way for your smart home devices to communicate with each other I did do a full dedicated video talking about matter and what it is I will leave it in the description if you guys want to check out more now with the newest fifth gen dot there are two additional features that are built in we have got a motion sensor and a temperature sensor these can be used for triggering smart home automation which we'll be covering in a little bit it also has a feature
3:02 where you can tap the top to play and pause music end a phone call stop a timer or snooze and alarm and this has the ability of being a Wi-Fi Range Extender if you have the amazon-owned Euro brand wi-fi [Music] system first off you can't install any apps on this device anything that you want to set up or check is going to have to be done through the Alexa app from your phone or tablet everything that you want to do on these devices is streaming from the internet so you can't load your own music onto the device lastly this device is not waterproof so don't put it outside in the rain because it will damage this speaker keep it indoors or if you are going to put it outside make
3:48 sure it is in a covered [Music] area so what media can you get on this device now obviously with this being a speaker we're not streaming any shows or movies but we do have the ability to listen to music podcasts and audiobooks as for music We have several different options in the app we're going to click on more we're going to go to settings and then we're going to go to music and podcasts from here we'll have a list of all the streaming services that we can use and sign in if we have an account for them we've also got the option of setting up our default players so when you're requesting a song or a podcast it can pull from your streaming service of choice in addition to that you can also listen to audiobooks from audible or
4:34 request your favorite radio [Music] station if you have multiple Echo devices you can set up speaker groups this will allow you to play music throughout the house now to set up a speaker group in the app we're going to go ahead and click on devices down here click on the plus side up in the top corner from here we've got a couple of different op options we are going to click on combine speakers and here are where we have some options we can set up multi-room music so if we want to combine all of our speakers here we can do that you can set up a home theater system so if you want to pair a couple of speakers and set it up in a home theater type setting you can do that by selecting this or we've also got a stereo pair with a subwoofer this is
5:20 going to allow two separate speakers to play the left and right channel but for our demo right here we're going to set up multiroom music we can go ahead and and then select the devices that we want to add to this so maybe we want to go through and just click on our devices right here and get those added into a speaker group then we're going to click on the next button we'll choose a name for ours let's go ahead and just click on partytime speaker group I will click on Save and now when we want to use a speaker group we are going to request our music and ask it to play it on the partytime speaker group now there are a few different ways to adjust the volume on this device we have physical buttons on the top for turning the volume up and down but you can also request has to have the music played at a certain level set volume to 20% set volume to
6:06 80% now if you want more control to to sound you can go into the settings through the app and adjust the Bas mids and treble now if that's not good enough you can always connect an external Bluetooth speaker to help improve the audio this is also going to give you the ability to move around with that speaker whether you want to listen to it inside or outside all right to connect to a Bluetooth speaker like we have over here I'm going to go ahead and click on device is we are going to select our echo. fifth generation and then our option right here Bluetooth connection we are going to tap on that to add it to our Bluetooth and we have see we got our LG right there so once I tap on that we can see that the LG is now connected so any song that we request on our DOT over here will be playing on our
6:53 external [Music] speaker communicating on this device is another popular feature you can make announcements throughout the house drop in on other Echo devices and even make phone calls okay we're going to click on the more button and then communicate up here at the top so here is where you can either place a call you can share some photos if they have an Echo Show we've got our drop in and announcement features right here now for placing a call you do have to have contacts set up so up here I'm going to go ahead and click on contacts now you can I'm going to go ahead and click on this option right up here we can import our contacts from our phone if you do want to do that personally I don't want every single one of my contacts imported from my phone so I leave that disabled and I can just add
7:39 contacts manually if I want to do that you can set up emergency contacts block manage all your favorites different things like that so that's for setting up your different contacts now for me I've got all of my echo devices listed here in the app we've also got groups quick access different things like that so for example if I wanted to place a call to Emmy I could say call Emmy or if I wanted to make an announcement you can just say your wake word and then announce and say what you are going to say if you don't want to verbally say that if we go back here and tap on announcement we can then type it in and it can go ahead and announce something for us same thing with dropin so with dropin we can click here and then we can select the different devices that we want to drop into now for a drop in that
8:25 is going to automatically bring up an open communication with that device so that way you can just essentially pop in and listen to what's going on somebody does not have to answer the other side but they will be notified that somebody is dropping in and there will be a green light on the device knowing that somebody is listening on the other [Music] end having an echo device with Alexa built in opens up full control of all of its smart home features now the echo dot does not have a smart home hub built inside of it like we see with the bigger Echo devices but that doesn't matter if we have a device that says works with Alexa on the box now the one caveat to this is that your devices are going to be controlled in the cloud instead of locally on a home hub so if the internet
9:11 does go out your home automations will stop working when you first get the Alexa app setup and running I recommend creating groups for each room of the house this will help later down the road when setting up automations and routines so I've got a colored light bulb here from TP link and it says on the box works with Alexa let me show you how easy it is to get this thing connected with the app loaded up I'm going to go ahead and turn on the light bulb that should put it into pairing mode with my phone close to that light it may automatically pop up for me to add but if it doesn't I could just say Alexa discover devices now that it's connected let's go ahead and create a simple routine load up the app and click on more and then we're going to click on routines we load up into the gallery tab now this is going to give us some ideas of automations that we can create now since I do have so many devices I don't know if these recommendations are based
9:58 off the devices that I have already added or if everyone is seeing the same thing it'd be great if you guys can comment below and let me know what you're seeing on yours now I have created a video diving a little bit deeper into routines and setting those up I also have another video talking about 12 different routines that I use throughout my house it's a pretty fun video and I recommend you guys checking it out now all of these other Amazon videos that I've created and I've been talking about in this video I put in a playlist so I will add that playlist at the end of this video and I'll also have a link in the description for you guys to check check them all out now once you get a few more smart lights and smart plugs set up you can take better advantage of the Alexa guard feature if we load up the app right here I'm going to go ahead and tap on devices down here at the bottom and then at the very top we see the feature that says guard and
10:43 right next to it it says home if I tap on this we've got some cool things that we can set up right here so if we look down it says current status we've got the option for away lighting so this is pretty cool when we do set our guard to being on armed it will activate our way lighting so it'll turn our lights and our switches on and off if we're not home indicating to somebody that somebody is present in the house we've also got a couple other features here we've got smart alerts so if it hears a smoke alarm or CO2 alarm you'll get notified of that or if it hears glass breaking you'll get notified of that too now there is also the feature of the Alexa guard plus if I click here on the very top where it says set up more features I'm going to go ahead and tap on that and it brings up some of the Plus features now you do have to have a
11:30 subscription for the plus version but if you do have the plus version if it detects that there is a knock at the door it can play a dog barking sound we've also got the ability to activate sounds with sirens and then we've got emergency helpline so those are some of the additional features you can get if you do have the plus version another thing to mention are the additional features that you get with Amazon owned products like ring if you do have a ring video doorbell you can turn on additional features that you use your Echo dots as additional doorbell chimes to do this we're going to jump back into the app I'm going to click on devices at the bottom and then right here in the middle we've got a magnifying glass I'm going to go do that for doing a search and I'm going to search for ring devices so we'll do a search
12:17 right there these are all the ring devices that I have under M I'm going to go to the very bottom one my ring peephole camera CU that's the one that I like the best up in the top Corner we see the gear icon so I'm going to go ahead and click on that gear icon and then here in the middle section where it says announcements here is where we can set up these different announcements so I've got it when there's a doorbell press notification to send an announcement to devices so I can go ahead and click on the announcement devices and I can pick which ones I want this to work on so this way if you've got an echo device maybe in a kids room where they take naps or something like that and you don't want that specific device to give an announcement you can just uncheck that box or you can go through and just check every box if you want every device in your house so it's nice that you can pick the devices that you want notifications on now if you
13:04 have an Echo Show device this is one of the devices that has a screen on it you can set up a feature that when somebody comes and rings that doorbell it will automatically pop up a live view of your ring camera on that display it's a pretty cool feature but that is just going to be for the Echo Show devices now I did mention this earlier but if you do have the compatible Euro Wi-Fi network which is also a brand that is owned by Amazon you can use your Echo dos to extend your Wi-Fi coverage up to 1,000 square ft and the dots will support speed of up to 100 megabits another cool Amazon ecosystem combination is connecting your Echo dot to your Fire TV stick this will allow you to use voice commands to control your Fire TV and search for things that you want to [Music]
13:51 watch let's jump back into the app and look through the remaining settings for our device so here in the app I'm going to go ahead and tap on devices at the the bottom and then right here in the middle we can see that we've got our echo. fifth generation so we'll tap on that and here are some of the settings so up here at the top we've got volume drop in and then do not disturb we turn that on and off we've got our Bluetooth connections right here so we can easily connect a Bluetooth device if we want to do that alarms and timers right there and then we've got our status if we want to do that so up here in the top Corner we've got our gear icon I'm going to click on that and this is going to bring up kind of the settings of this device up at the very top we can change the name so if you want to be a little bit more specific with the name you can change it there we've got our audio settings so tapping on the audio
14:36 settings this is where we're going to adjust our equalizer below that we've got our Bluetooth devices we've got our Wi-Fi network so if you need to connect to Wi-Fi you can do it there we have got speaker built in so if I click on this it's going to allow us to pick a specific speaker so maybe on this device we ask it to play music but I don't want this to be the main speaker that it plays on I want it to be on my nicer speaker that's over here I can select a preferred speaker for it to play on so we've got that option right there let's back out of that and scroll down a little bit more we've got the option for a stereo pair so if you do want to pair two of these up together and use them as a stereo pair you can do that we've got the option of pairing gadgets the tap gesture so this is something that we talked about earlier for setting up where if you want to tap the top for it to mean different things so we've got
15:21 that ultra sound motion detection so this is where it is going to be able to use ultrasound from this device because there's camera there's no way for it to detect motion but it does do that through ultrasound so we've got that we can set up right there we've got our temperature sensor we can set up our different sounds so in here is where you can adjust volumes we can do ringers for incoming calls start a request end a request so it's going to play a tune every time you are talking to the device so that's kind of nice to set up if you want to do that let's scroll down here we've got an option for setting up Amazon kids so if you do want to use this for kids you can set up that option right there it's going to make the content that goes to it more kidfriendly so if this is not going to be used for a kid I'd recommend just leaving that disabled we've got there do not disturb
16:07 you can turn that on and off communication so if we tap on communication this is where we can control the device to allow announcements to come through or allow drop-ins to come through so if you don't want that setup at all go ahead and turn that communication feature off let's go back down here we' got our device location our time zone our wake word so if you do want to change the Wake word of the device maybe you don't want use the main one cuz it's being triggered all the time here are your other options for this device now the ones that you see at the very bottom the hey Samuel and hey Santa those are ones that I had paid for earlier on I think it was like two bucks and you can add those to it I will say they weren't that great because you have to say hey Samuel every time that you want to talk to it and then it will use Samuel Jackson's voice so it's more of a novelty thing it wasn't as cool as I thought it would be so I just
16:53 recommend don't even bother with that stuff which I don't even think you can get those anymore um let's see let's go back back down here we've got a follow-up mode so if you do want the device to listen for a potential follow-up request so maybe you ask it to set an alarm and then you want it to listen for something else that you want to say you can turn that on here so it'll do a followup see what else we've got here we've got our Alexa voice so here you can change the accent of your device number one I think is a female number two I think is a male voice and then we've got our speaking rate so you can adjust the rate of how fast or how slow the device can talk which is a cool feature if you are having trouble understanding the device what else do we have here we of voice we got adaptive
17:40 listening you can set our language our unit of measures what it is registered to and that pretty much covers the settings of this specific device now since this isn't an Alexa app review I'm going to go ahead and stop right there but there is so much more that you can do within that app so there is a world of ways to use your Echo device features are being added and tweaked all the time but not all features are good features and that is why I recommend you guys checking out this video talking about some of the features that you are going to want to turn off right now on your Echo devices if this video is helpful give it a thumbs up let me know that you liked it as always don't forget to subscribe for more content like this and I'll see you guys in the next [Music]
18:27 video
