My 80 year old mom is down in Florida in total isolation during the global pandemic known as Covid-19.
Other than going for an occasional walk and taking the car out for a spin once in a while to make sure it still starts, and getting Facetime calls from family, she doesn’t get a lot of social interaction these days and I’m worried about keeping her spirits up.
I’m here with my wife, college age son and the dog but she is all alone. No pets and no roommates. So I had the bright idea of getting her a Alexa device like the Amazon Echo Dot.
They don’t cost a lot and it will give her something to talk to that will actually talk back unlike some of the stuffed animals she has or the Roomba she occasionally scolds.
I was a bit nervous about the remote set up procedure but it claims to be simple and it was rather simple, even with a 80 year old who claims to have “fat fingers” when it comes to typing in passwords.
I ordered a single Amazon Echo Dot with a smart wall plug but then realized that I wanted to send her the clock version. Opps.
Amazon shipped thing within 20 minutes so I didn’t have a chance to cancel the order. Oh well. I ended up adding a second one to order. After all her apartment is rather spacious so she probably could use more than one.
The order arrived THE NEXT DAY. Amazing. The smart plug is coming the next day but still – that was fast.
Setup with me Facetime-ing was ok. “No Mom, not your iPhone password, your network password”
“What do you mean you don’t have one. You have to have one. Look on the bottom of the router…”
After a few miss-typed passwords and we were in business discovering all of the fun things you can ask Alexa and have Alexa do like look up recipes, tell jokes, play music, turn on the news, turn on lights and more.
The Amazon Smart Plug
The Amazon Smart plug is typically sold for $25 but at the time of purchase it can be bought for $10 with an Echo. I got my Mom two of them and they came one day after the Echos.
In theory these would be very simple to install but it took a couple of hours long distance over the phone because she had to figure out navigating the app and the concept of the OCR code.
Never worked but the manual set up was very easy once I got her on the right page in the app. Plug in smart plug, add new device, push button on the plug to pair it.
It took another day to figure out where to place the plug, how to plug in a lamp and turn the lamp on (very important), never touch the switch on the lamp again (use your Alexa voice control) and to name the plugs “living room light” and “bedroom light” — other wise Alexa just knows it as Plug 1 and Plug 2.
Then we tried creating a group so she could turn both lights on or off at the same time. I gave up. This will just have to wait until the pandemic is over.
What’s the best Alexa Device?
Hands down the best value is the Echo Dot with Clock. While there are a lot of Alexa devices to choose from, the Echo Dot with Clock is the most practical with its impressive performance and small footprint — this pint-sized smart speaker is an excellent entry point into the world of Amazon Alexa devices. You get the whole world of Alexa plus a cool clock that can display the temperature.