Broadcasts! Alexa’s new feature

Woke up today to another pretty cool gift from Amazon in terms of a new Alexa feature.  This new one is called Broadcast. This new feature allows you to say ‘Alexa, tell everyone …’ and then your message.  You can say, Tell everyone, Broadcast or Announce to send your message to all echo devices in the house.  Unlike the drop in functionality which was a two way intercom with various rooms, this is a one way broadcast to all of the devices in your account.  I’ve tested it a bunch this morning and there are a few Easter eggs embedded already.   Say ‘Alexa, tell everyone Good Morning’ and you will first hear a rooster crowing and then your message.  Or say ‘Alexa, tell everyone it’s breakfast time’ and the message is prefixed with a dinner bell.  Very neat and gives your messages a little flair.  Amazon is definitely giving consumers reasons to put a dot in every room.  We have about 7 of them already in the house.

I love the way IOT devices just keep getting better.  Buy a super smart device and year after year the devices just keep getting better.  That is some amazing ROI. 😉 

The new feature works on all of the standard Echo devices but again unfortunately leaves out the Amazon Tap (which I have and love).  I wish they would allow Always On Tap devices to be part of these cool new features but the standard Echoes, Dots and Shows all work fine.  No way to programmatically send announcements or TTS to the devices from Home Assistant yet but my fingers are crossed.

This feature is said to be rolling out to the US and EU and I had it early this morning when I was testing it.  No need to download anything or enable anything.  She just woke up smarter this morning.