Has anyone found a 'real' use for their device? What I mean is something that cannot be done as quickly and easily with their phone or getting up from the sofa? The novelty of asking Alexa to tell me a joke has worn off and the annoyance of hearing the response that she didn't understand the question is also wearing thin. I'm waiting for proper Sonos integration when I will probably use it more but I really don't think it's an essential part of life at the moment.
We've had four Dots around the house for some months now. After the initial flurry of use, their main day to day use has settled down to be mainly:
1. Turning the lights on / off and changing brightness (I'd swear people have forgotten they can use a switch too!) We've a shedload of Hue lights around the house and the integration is excellent.
2. Listening to music - especially with the sleep timer in the bedroom
3. Checking the weather for wherever we happen to be heading
4. Boosting the hot water / heating (we have HIVE and a load of hive plugs too)
5. Timers and alarms (the annoyance here is you can't set alarms on specific Dots from other Dots)
Less frequent but still useful:
6. As a quick calculator
7. Wikipedia searches to resolve TV arguments
8. Controlling christmas lights, fans in summer etc.
The annoyances are I have to remember to mute the one in the office when on conference calls with work, and you do get the occasional random 'Sorry I didn't understand the question I heard' from supposedly empty rooms (heavily accented ghosts asking questions I guess). It has become the preferred means of controlling the other connected devices in the house, and quite quickly too - the trick being to make sure the names of the devices are sensible and different, and tactical use of the grouping function in the Alexa app. I could have saved a packet on the HUE switches as they don't get used at all anymore.
For other stuff - it's ju
