Alexa Announcements Feature Now Works On Every Alexa-compatible Device [WORK]

Amazon's Alexa calling and messaging feature enables you to make and receive calls, as well as send messages between Echo devices, the Amazon Alexa app for iOS and Android, and Fire tablets. It's a neat way to contact family and friends. The best part? The feature is completely free to use, as it works over Wi-Fi on most Echo devices and into Alexa apps too.

Alexa announcements feature now works on every Alexa-compatible device

The free feature was first introduced on the original Amazon Echo Show, but Amazon has extended this functionality to other Echo and Alexa devices, so it developed what we now call "Alexa calling" or "Alexa calling and messaging". It works with compatible Echo devices, the Alexa app, and it works with Fire tablets.

Is there something going on with the Play-Fi skill or alexa integration? Up until shortly after this prefered speaker update everything worked fine. Now, none of my alexa controlable playfi devices will actually play anything from Alexa. Ive disabled the skill, signed out of all the speakers, deleted the speakers, then reinstalled everything, to no avail. Some support would be great, it cant be just me being neither of my devices will play from alexa.

Just about every smart home product works with Alexa, so knowing which are the best can be tricky. Things you'll want to consider include the following:Design: Is this a well-made product? In the case of a smart plug, for instance, is it slim enough so that it doesn't block your other outlet?Functionality: What features does the smart home device have? If it's a smart plug or a smart light, does it have a Home/Away feature, and can you schedule it to turn on at sunset?Price: Often, the cheapest smart home device is not the best. You may be tempted by a cheaper gadget, but make sure it meets your needs before buying it.

San Francisco, May 26 : Expanding its voice-enabled capabilities, Amazon is rolling out the Announcements feature across all of Alexa-compatible devices.Launched in 2018, the feature lets users send a short voice message to Alexa-enabled devices that are part of the same network with a single voice command.Amazon says that Announcements is "available for certified Alexa built-in products to implement and new ones that pass the provided self-tests and certification", The Verge reported on Saturday. Users can send out their announcements by saying "Alexa announce that/tell everyone/broadcast" that would be announced via any Alexa-compatible device including Amazon Fire TV Cube, Sonos speakers, Facebook's Portal and others.The feature initially rolled out to the Echo, Echo Plus, Echo Dot, Echo Show and Echo Spot devices. Earlier in 2017, Google had introduced the same functionality as part of Google Home line of smart speakers that allows users to broadcast one message to all Assistant-enabled devices.

Just like practically everything else you do with an Echo device, you use convenient voice commands to enable the Drop In feature. Dropping in from an Echo device is as easy as telling Alexa which device you want to drop into.

In addition to the traditional one-on-one Drop In feature, Alexa also enables you to drop into all the Echo devices in your home at the same time for a group session. With Group Drop In, all the Echo devices in your home are called simultaneously and each answered individually. Everyone on their own Echo devices can talk to and hear everyone else on their Echo devices, in real-time. It's just like a group phone call.

Alexa has another communications feature, similar to Drop In, that lets you make one-way announcements to all the Echo devices in your household. It's a way to broadcast messages to everyone in your home without them having to answer or connect individually.

I think its a good idea every so often to disable/re-enable the Alexa skill. I have to with my Samsung stuff too. I think the skill gets updated by Amazon or Wyze and reapplied to their server. So, I believe the commands sometimes lose their sync to our devices. The good news is sometimes it works sometimes it does not - but it cost nothing to do it.

Thanks Eric, it works perfect, I add one routine to turn on and other to turn off as I am creating a switch in smartthings, it works on Mexico. now I am looking to get the information back to smartthings whe alexa (or phisically) turn on/off the device so I can see on smartthing if is turned on/off. but anyway works perfect!

A feature of free Alexa Calling and Messaging, Drop In works much like an intercom system, where users can instantly connect and communicate via Alexa-enabled devices. On devices with screens and cameras, Drop In includes video. 350c69d7ab