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You'll still need to sort out delivery (Shipito,etc) as Amazon does not ship this product direct to Australia. But nevertheless a good saving if you, like me, were planning to buy this through that avenue anyway.
FWIW, B&H Photo Video DO ship direct to Australia, and are also droping US$20 off their listing price for this product: https://goo.gl/1SlRO1
I bought an Echo while in the US.
Love it but no regional set up in Australia yet and had to install the apk file as not available via app store due to region.
via the Amazon US app store?
Can you get these things to add stuff you Mygroceries.com.au ?
I reckon that'd be the handiest thing of all! (although the kids might start adding junk food).
No easy mygroceries.com.au ordering yet.. as you cant easily change your address away from US/UK, etc. Timezone you can though.
However it works very well with home automation (lighting Wemo, Lifx, TV Logitech Harmony, etc). and Spotify,etc for playing music. You can connect it to your google calendar, play trivia games, set alarms, ask questions, etc. It ends up being fun for family and friends.
They have a lot of skills that can be added, as well lots of folks are doing custom automation with it.
I have had mine for almost 3 weeks now. lots of fun.
I've had mine for a few weeks too. I bought the smaller Echo Dot's from B&H and agree completely with the home automation.
Using mine with my LIFX bulbs, and it's so nice to be able to say "Alexa, turn off all the lights" just before going to bed.
Try saying "Alexa, sing me a song" haha.
How easy was it to actually set up just as a working unit in Australia? Looks very complex from the instructions I read a few months ago.
For me very easy… 2 steps
1)Download the APK onto my phone.
If you search for Alexa APK, you should find a few options, not sure which one i used but it was a random one.
2)Change the time to Sydney time:
Here are the instructions http://www.echotalk.org/index.php/topic,228.msg1081.html#msg…
That being said, I do have Getflix which has a amazon US dns switch, which I am not sure if it actually uses, but I guess it could help me later on if I want to use Amazon music. Maybe someone else can comment about this.
I already had a spotify subscription,a Harmony Hub, and was slowly buying lifx bulbs as the deals came up.
Good luck!
ps.. My address is still setup as a US address so no amazon ordering, dominos, uber capabilities. Or anything else that uses the address. I use it more for Home automation and having a Siri/Ok Google style interface
Depends what you call a working unit, I just got a Dot and wasn't hard to get it running for what I'm using it for.
Got the app from Apkmirror, Harmony and LIFX skills worked out of the box, just had to go the request maker route to set the timezone to +8 (gave up on curl) for calendar and time to work right.
Haven't been able to upload my own music to Amazon since I can't set up the account outside the US so limited to streaming radio.
Anything location specific like ordering an Uber won't work (except things where you can specify the city like weather, but I'm using Big Sky now anyway)
B&H more often than not brings down their price to match Amazon on amazon products like echo. Usually a couple week lag. Best to get it from them as they have reasonable shipping rates compared with most forwarders I have tried.
Can I change wake word to "NSA"?
No… only 3 choices at the moment (Alexa, Echo, Amazon).
I dont recommend "Echo" - found its too short and not an easily recognised wake word. Alexa works OK most of the time, and Amazon should be OK too.
You dont need to call out for the NSA, they are always listening..
+1 for not using "Echo". Moved from Alexa to Echo and recognition rate dropped drastically.
They also have the Dot at $39.99 again but B&H hasn't matched
I find B&H usually lags by a week or two. bought a few things from them and noticed this trend.
Getting one of these babies as a Christmas present, going a little insane knowing that it's just sitting in the next room 😝
sorta on topic - what does everyone use for shipping stuff from the US these days? i had been using shipitto but this time they've been garbage. my package got delivered to them, they sat on it for 5 days - i finally got to chose my shipping method + pay, then they sat on it for another 2 days before the weekend.
usually they're quick but they've basically added 7 - 10 days to the overall shipping time