FWIW, my Apple MiniPods arrived a day early. I had one setup, scenes mapped, and TTS working in under 20 minutes. It was significantly easier than Alexa. I nearly didn't try due to thinking I would need a good night sleep to slog through getting it going. Even got HomeBridge going on my NAS. Color me very pleasantly surprised.
I will look for warts, but thus far, all the stuff that was driving me nuts with Alexa is not an issue with the Apple devices. The only thing I foresee that's nice on Alexa is multiple timers visibly showing the Show devices. Anyone overcome that?
My original tall back cyclinder Echo still seems to continue to work fine.
The Echo Show 5 it was replaced with seems to have gotten slower and buggier over the last year.
One recent Alexa âimprovementâ was the addition of a routine I didnât ask for or knew was Implemented. It started turning the speaker volume down to whisper every morning at 3am. Thought I was going crazy as I kept setting it back daily. Got to Googling and learned of the improvement. Sure enough, looked in the routines and there it was.
Although I'm an iPhone/Mac user I have heavily invested in Alexa devices. I was quite effectively using Node-Red to process Alexa voice commands locally without the need for a cloud connection. Then, Amazon made some behind the scenes "improvements" and it completely broke that. That hasn't been great for WAF. I have managed to find ways to force her to do what I want (most of the time) but when she starts the "there are several things that share the name _____ which one did you want?", it's infuriating. For some reason she has always refused to set fans to "medium" and don't even get me started on her inability to understand the word "ludicrous" (as in "ludicrous speed").
I'm glad this topic came up because I've been wondering about HomePod as an alternative, now I might have to give it a try. One question I have about HomePod is does it have something similar to routines?
If you mean does it randomly create crap routines you don't want, then no. If you are looking for automations, then yes it does, but I prefer to use RM on HE for that when possible. Much more powerful.
Has anyone tried to re-train your voice to Alexa ? In the last few days ?
seemed to help with mine also re-trained the wife's. may or may not help give it a try ?
Found this on Reddit ..
I spent weeks on this in our new house. First off remove light from the name of every light.
Use things like Bathroom ceiling Bathroom Vanity
Then add them to the group âBathroomâ with your echo device thatâs also in the bathroom group.
Then verify each device is classified as a light and not a switch. (Select device and hit properties )
Now you can say âAlexa turn on lightsâ in the bathroom and it turns them all on or you can say âAlexa turn on vanity lightâ (or ceiling light) and itâs more specific so works as well.
When you have things named light hereâs what happens. Bathroom Ceiling light Bathroom Vanity light Group bathroom
Alexa now gets confused because thereâs a âhiddenâ light name with the bathroom group. Meaning you can say Alexa turn on bathroom lights and it now has three conflicting devices that all have âbathroomâ and âlightâ in them.
