Echo Dot not listening too well

[barrygordon]

I have 5 Dot's set up in 5 different rooms with a single account and a spoken list of 108 phrases. I have noticed that lately I got the following issues and am looking for advice or others seeing the same problem(s).

 

I am getting a significant number of "I found several devices matching that name, which one do you want"   I then repeat the room name e.g. "kitchen lights" and the command executes flawlessly.

 

A Dot drops off line (blue light goes red) although the router is fine and internet communications are fine.  The Dot generally comes back in a minute or so.

 

The dot believes the wake word was heard although nothing like it was said.  Sometimes there is no sound at all (rarely) .

 

Is anyone seeing similar situations?

 

Barry

 

 

[larryllix]

I have 5 Dot's set up in 5 different rooms with a single account and a spoken list of 108 phrases. I have noticed that lately I got the following issues and am looking for advice or others seeing the same problem(s).

 

I am getting a significant number of "I found several devices matching that name, which one do you want" I then repeat the room name e.g. "kitchen lights" and the command executes flawlessly.

 

A Dot drops off line (blue light goes red) although the router is fine and internet communications are fine. The Dot generally comes back in a minute or so.

 

The dot believes the wake word was heard although nothing like it was said. Sometimes there is no sound at all (rarely) .

 

Is anyone seeing similar situations?

 

Barry

The multiple devices report is a lie. I believe it is picked out of random responses used, when it just didn't understand/parse the name to anything in it's vocalbase.

 

I get the same thing constantly with certain names. I had a lot of problems when I had multiple vocals starting with the same word like.

• Blue Light
• Blue Mood
• Blue mood
• Blue

It seems if the first word is found more than once it just gives up and doesn't parse the second word. Sometimes it seems that ONLY the first word matters and I am running out of words.

 

I cannot, for the life of me, make anything work with T.V. or Tee Vee in the vocal work at all.

Another new problem is using Alexa to operate a receiver for radio stations now. Anything with FM, or a radio station name it jumps over to it's repertoire of radio stations. After trying a few it assumes everything I say is a radio station and now I get it playing radio stations without any subscriptions. Some jerk station is named "amplifier" also Didn't happen before!

 

There is some weird things that seem to be changing lately. I am getting a lot of just going away with no responses.

 

I think there may be some self-learning algorithm going on to establish what is noise and what is actual commands.

Edited January 18, 2017 by larryllix

[stusviews]

Larry,

 

I have no difficulty with "a c" in lower case (although I believe that doesn't matter) with no periods (that matters). Radios station call letters bring up the station on the Alexa device, so you'll need to give the station a unique name. I found that "alternative" and "oldies" are also reserved, but names like "tunes 1" and tunes 2" do work.

 

Also, Alexa sometimes has problems here with one word spokens such as "light" even though each account has only one spoken called "light."

[Xathros]

I have 5 Dot's set up in 5 different rooms with a single account and a spoken list of 108 phrases. I have noticed that lately I got the following issues and am looking for advice or others seeing the same problem(s).

 

I am getting a significant number of "I found several devices matching that name, which one do you want"   I then repeat the room name e.g. "kitchen lights" and the command executes flawlessly.

 

A Dot drops off line (blue light goes red) although the router is fine and internet communications are fine.  The Dot generally comes back in a minute or so.

 

The dot believes the wake word was heard although nothing like it was said.  Sometimes there is no sound at all (rarely) .

 

Is anyone seeing similar situations?

 

Barry

 

About the same for me.  False triggers are way more frequent than they used to be both on those called "Echo" and the one I call "Alexa"  Recognition accuracy has gone way down hill.  Last night, I had to rename my "gym" to "workout room" because Echo didn't know how to turn on Jam, Jan, Jen or Gin...  Oddly enough, the same echo could turn off the Gym without fail.  Trying to turn on the lights in my garage, called "bay one" and "bay two", now results in music being played instead of my lights coming on.  So, yeah....   Not just you.

 

-Xathros

[Karen L]

Hi, Mine does that as well

I changed the first name of most of my spokens and it is much better.

I have three Dots.

 

-Karen

[barrygordon]

IMHO this is strictly an Amazon problem. I suspect that there are several issues afoot with the immense popularity of the echo devices.  I only hope that Amazon sees this as an important issue and quickly works to improve the speech recognition aspects of the product  All the nice things the Echo can do are wasted and useless if the device cannot reliably understand what it is being asked.

 

I suspect we need to get on Amazon's case big time.  I will be calling them shortly