Entries tagged with bugs

So last week...

After two work days of splendid operation, our Amazon Echo started miscueing on playing my playlists. As I said last week, Ms. Alexa's in Beta so I wasn't even upset to have to submit an error ticket to customer support (DW).

But today, well, different story:

Hooray! Tuesday 10 February 2015, around 3-3:30pm, I sat down to do some work. Tried Echo on playlists again and:

Echo is playing one of my playlists, in order, correctly.

AND, echo.amazon.com on my laptop is now showing the current song and a sidebar with the playlist under Now Playing -- it had no information during the troubles.

To recap:
Echo arrived 2/3 Tu, unpacked that night, played no playlists
Echo played playlists correctly 2/4 W - 2/5 Th
Echo did NOT play playlists correctly (and tested every day) 2/6 F - 2/9 M
Echo returned to proper operation 2/10 Tu

Thanks!

And on the survey form I said:

Definitely a Beta teething problem. I don't know why Echo stopped playing my playlists correctly Friday-Monday. Or displaying anything on the Now Playing page of either the Kindle App or echo.Amazon.com/#playing, but it's working now if I had to guess, it started about the time I got the notice that Amazon was providing playlists for Grammys -- as a programmer, I suspect a code push went awry. But feedback via the Echo app and the callback phone help were nicely thought out. Only had Echo for a week, but it's been otherwise great.

Now I shall get busy this week to report that (1) it really needs a volume 2½ setting, because there's too much gap between "Alexa volume two" and "Alexa volume three" and (b) the Now Playing app really should display how long a track is, the way most music apps do.

But that, as they say Ms. Alexa Echo, is for another day

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

Ms. Alexa Echo is feeling a bit under the weather.

We got our Amazon Echo on Tuesday and set it up quite easily at 10pm. Wednesday and Thursday I was home most of the day and had it playing my Amazon Music playlists, answering questions, doing math problems.

Friday, however, it's not handling my playlists correctly.

My guess is that someone did a code push to fix something else and there was a coding error or a corrupt server file or something.

Oh, it plays music just fine. Individual songs. But when I started one of my playlists, it didn't start with the first song. And then when I stopped and restarted it, it might play the same song over and over, or play with just the first couple of songs. Shuffle play was off. Telling Alexa to skip or play next track -- usually ended up replaying the current track.

Put in two error tickets. The second regarded the Echo App, both on the Kindle Fire HD and on the webpage for use on my laptop, isn't displaying the current track properly -- not getting the control keys. If you click on a song, it does give the control keys. But of course the app has just told Echo to play the one song.

Anyway, they've got on the Help tab of the Echo app a call feature, where you put in a phone number and they call you back, so you know it's them. Got almost an immediate callback and nearly zero wait for the next customer service person. We spent about 29 minutes trying different things.

It's actually an amusing process, since there's Echo, which you can give voice commands, the Echo remote, the Echo app and the guy on the phone. I tried very hard to refer to the program as Echo and not Alexa, because if you say Alexa followed by anything, Echo tries to parse it for a command. (grin) At one point I reread what was on the Home page, displaying what Echo thought I said, and read it verbatim, so Echo heard Alexa + command and executed it again. (grin)

To get link data back to the DSL provider, they needed me to do something. "Alexa temperature" works, because it also gives a little forecast, so it was on long enough to record.

Anyway, the problem has been turned over to the techies. As it should be.

Any other Echo users out there having trouble with playlists after Noon EST on Friday 6 February 2015?

I note that Amazon is telling Echo users that they have these nifty new Playlists just for the Grammies. Hmm... maybe I was right about the coding error.

Oh, and the Cool New Thing I learned yesterday is this: From the Echo remote only, hold the microphone key and say "Simon Says _______" and Alexa will say whatever you tell her to say. The guy who told me about this said it was really useful when he was writing and needed to tell one of his kids to go get him a fresh soda from the fridge. (evil-grin) No, I haven't tested having Alexa say naughty things. Yet. (double-evil-grin)

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

All Is Right With The World... Right With The World... Right With...

Ah... Beta...