Did you ever notice there's always a firefighter at fires? Just saying.

actually, a fire officer returning from another call was passing the complex and noticed, like, flames through the roof. no alarm system active, no neighbors called it in. Weird.

Bucky wrote:hahaha, someone had a quadracopter at the fire i just returned from. big commercial building, probably provided some good high altitude recon of the scene. I was on the opposite side from the command post, so I didn't get to see any of the footage. Hopefully we'll get the footage on DVD.

Yesterday we were fishing at the scout reservation and some guy from another pack came down to the lake with a quadcopter. He fired it up and had it hovering above the lake at a pretty good altitude. Suddenly it just went into a fast 45 degree angle decent and crashed hard in the woods somewhere off in the woods where there are no trails or anything nearby. The dude started freaking out and ran up off the fishing area trying to figure out how to get to his copter.

Did anyone on here get an Amazon Echo? Just got an email that my order is shipping tomorrow. Trying to decide if i want it, or if I should cancel. How's the sound quality on it, is that alone worth the $100?

TRT got one. IIRC his views are mixed with a bent towards the 'meh' side.

Bill McNeal wrote:Did anyone on here get an Amazon Echo? Just got an email that my order is shipping tomorrow. Trying to decide if i want it, or if I should cancel. How's the sound quality on it, is that alone worth the $100?

Sound quality is about what you'd expect from a 100 dollar speaker. It's fun to play around with sometimes and yell 'ALEXA PLAY TUPAC' at it. I've asked it the weather, when the Phillies play tomorrow etc. and it usually does pretty well.

Bill McNeal wrote:Did anyone on here get an Amazon Echo? Just got an email that my order is shipping tomorrow. Trying to decide if i want it, or if I should cancel. How's the sound quality on it, is that alone worth the $100?

the main things I use it for

1) music. Speakers are decent, doesnt beat a stereo system but it fills the room nicely. Since I have prime, Ive loaded a ton of free music in playlists that I play and it will also access my own music and pandora or IHeartRadio

2) weather- I ask for the weather every morning

3) spelling- my kids (and wife since she is a horrible speller) ask it to spell things all the time

4) shopping lists- I ask it to add things to the list and have had my kids do the same when they use up the last of something. I can access the list via my echo app on my phone when I go to the grocery store

5) I've pranked people by using the remote and have alexa repeat what I say from another room by using the simon says feature. I don't know if they thought it was an AI but my in-laws actually had a conversation with it thinking it was cognizant. (obviously Ive run out of people to do this to)

I havent had a chance to try the "this then that" applications as I havent had the time to set them up but there do appear to have some useful functions in them

Thanks guys, I'm planning on putting it in my office, I don't know how much I'll use the other features, currently I have a jbl Bluetooth alarm clock in here that I stream my music to, it's okay, but it's a little wonky and doesn't really fill the room as much as I'd like. It shipped this morning, so I'm getting it, I'll think it over, it looks like there is a pretty healthy market selling them on eBay (should be able to get $150 for it at least) so I'll figure out what to do with it when I get it.

Apparently mine is arriving on Wednesday. How exciting?

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:

Bill McNeal wrote:Did anyone on here get an Amazon Echo? Just got an email that my order is shipping tomorrow. Trying to decide if i want it, or if I should cancel. How's the sound quality on it, is that alone worth the $100?

the main things I use it for

1) music. Speakers are decent, doesnt beat a stereo system but it fills the room nicely. Since I have prime, Ive loaded a ton of free music in playlists that I play and it will also access my own music and pandora or IHeartRadio

2) weather- I ask for the weather every morning

3) spelling- my kids (and wife since she is a horrible speller) ask it to spell things all the time

4) shopping lists- I ask it to add things to the list and have had my kids do the same when they use up the last of something. I can access the list via my echo app on my phone when I go to the grocery store

5) I've pranked people by using the remote and have alexa repeat what I say from another room by using the simon says feature. I don't know if they thought it was an AI but my in-laws actually had a conversation with it thinking it was cognizant. (obviously Ive run out of people to do this to)

I havent had a chance to try the "this then that" applications as I havent had the time to set them up but there do appear to have some useful functions in them

This is basically what I use it for, also. Well, except for #5 but you can bet your bottom dollar that I am going to. Also, we use it as a timer a lot.

I'll usually just ell her to "Play music" just to what she comes up with. I've listened to some cool stuff that I would not otherwise have thought of.

Been using the echo all weekend. We've all been having fun telling it to do things, my three year old is so mad because she can't say the wake words well enough to get it to recognize her. She stands in front of it going "Aletha knock knock, Althea weather, Aletha spongebob!" And nothing happens.

The voice controls work really well, definitely been surprised that it hears me across the kitchen with it playing music at high volume. It's not perfect, but I feel like it's waaaaaaay better than Siri, i actually speak semi naturally to it and it generally understands what I want it to do. I feel like with Siri, I have to speak fairly specific phrases to get it to do what I want. Like adding a calendar entry, I can never get Siri to do it without looking up how. With the echo, I feel like it's more forgiving, I can say it how I would normally say it and it does it. The distortion is real and a really fucking downer, I really like everything else about it but when it gets crazy distortion on certain songs at volume 5 (out of ten) it's a real major drawback. I haven't decided if it's a deal killer yet, but it probably will be.

Bill McNeal wrote:Been using the echo all weekend. We've all been having fun telling it to do things, my three year old is so mad because she can't say the wake words well enough to get it to recognize her. She stands in front of it going "Aletha knock knock, Althea weather, Aletha spongebob!" And nothing happens.

The voice controls work really well, definitely been surprised that it hears me across the kitchen with it playing music at high volume. It's not perfect, but I feel like it's waaaaaaay better than Siri, i actually speak semi naturally to it and it generally understands what I want it to do. I feel like with Siri, I have to speak fairly specific phrases to get it to do what I want. Like adding a calendar entry, I can never get Siri to do it without looking up how. With the echo, I feel like it's more forgiving, I can say it how I would normally say it and it does it. The distortion is real and a really fucking downer, I really like everything else about it but when it gets crazy distortion on certain songs at volume 5 (out of ten) it's a real major drawback. I haven't decided if it's a deal killer yet, but it probably will be.

Interesting. Mine goes to 11.

so next up on the list of Things That I Want That They Don't Make:

an in-dash android car stereo WITH HD radio. Wanna run waze from a 7" in-dash display while using google music AND having the HD radio option. Anyone seen such a beast??

Bucky wrote:so next up on the list of Things That I Want That They Don't Make:

an in-dash android car stereo WITH HD radio. Wanna run waze from a 7" in-dash display while using google music AND having the HD radio option. Anyone seen such a beast??

Android Auto is starting to slowly trickle out. I think Pioneer or someone might make a double din unit with AndroidAuto. i'm holding out that i can retrofit whatever VW comes up with and put that into my car.

https://www.android.com/intl/en_us/auto/

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/ ... IC-8100NEX

http://www.cnet.com/products/pioneer-avic-8100nex/

I use a cassette adapter

Bucky wrote:so next up on the list of Things That I Want That They Don't Make:

an in-dash android car stereo WITH HD radio. Wanna run waze from a 7" in-dash display while using google music AND having the HD radio option. Anyone seen such a beast??

The Garmin cartel won't let the auto manufacturers do this

Android Auto looks pretty cool, but its fatal flaw (IMO) is that it requires a USB connection to your phone. There's a bunch of android-based car receivers out there, where you just install apps as usual, but I can't find any with an HD receiver...of course most of these require a wifi source, but I've got an aircard for that.

Bucky wrote:Android Auto looks pretty cool, but its fatal flaw (IMO) is that it requires a USB connection to your phone. There's a bunch of android-based car receivers out there, where you just install apps as usual, but I can't find any with an HD receiver...of course most of these require a wifi source, but I've got an aircard for that.

yeah, not sure why they don't use bluetooth for the connection rather than USB. guessing the data stream is too much for bluetooth to handle?

jamiethekiller wrote:

Bucky wrote:Android Auto looks pretty cool, but its fatal flaw (IMO) is that it requires a USB connection to your phone. There's a bunch of android-based car receivers out there, where you just install apps as usual, but I can't find any with an HD receiver...of course most of these require a wifi source, but I've got an aircard for that.

yeah, not sure why they don't use bluetooth for the connection rather than USB. guessing the data stream is too much for bluetooth to handle?

think you may be right on that, even my system that has apps like pandora won't go through BT and have to go thru the USB

BT is fine for audio (usually, I don't understand TRT's pandora issue? google music works fine over BT on my current cheap a$$ receiver) but android auto is basically 'screen mirroring' technology, so it has a video component that can be quite wordy based on what app is running.