A notification on your lock screen will tell you that you have a call in the Amazon Alexa app. Unlock your iPhone, and then you can answer the call. You’ll see a familiar screen for the call with buttons to switch to speaker phone, end the call, or mute your microphone. You can also receive voice and text messages from Alexa Calling on your iPhone. You’ll get a notification of the incoming message, and just have to visit your Alexa app on your iPhone to retrieve it. The app supports sending text and voice messages, too.
Text messages are transcribed, but that particular feature doesn’t work very well yet. When you really want to call someone using Alexa Calling, it’s easy to do from the app. Just open the app, tap the text bubble at the bottom of your screen, and choose the contact you want to call.
You’ll have the option to send them a message or place a call, just as easy as that. Another Possible Use for the Echo, Playing around with the Alexa app, I discovered I could actually call myself from the app to my Echo. This means that I could use the app on my iPhone to phone home straight to the Echo.
Someone at home could answer, and thus use Alexa Calling as a remote intercom. Speaking of intercoms, it would also be possible to use multiple Echo devices within the same household for that purpose. I can say, for example, “Alexa, call Jeff Butts.” Alexa Calling will ring my Alexa app as well as any Echo devices I own.
This might not be the most ideal scenario, but if your household has multiple Amazon accounts - it becomes the perfect intercom system. You’ll need to have a telephone number for each one, but a virtual or Voice Over IP number that supports text messaging, like Google Voice, should work just fine. Just set up contacts for each Echo device, and call away.
Alexa Calling is new, and we’re still figuring out how it all works and what we can do with it. One missing link, for now, is the desktop. The Mac clients available to interface with Amazon’s voice assistant do not currently support Alexa Calling. Perhaps that will change in the future. For now, though, know that your Echo devices and your iPhone work great with Alexa Calling.
I believe it would have 240V AC across it (for half the cycle), which is within the rating. Anonymous: I didn't think anyone actually read the footnotes, but you're right - the capacitor is 220pF. I did get it right on the schematic though. Ken: thanks for your reply. From what you described, I believe there is a legitimate safety concern to use Apple iPhone charger in countries with 220Vac mains electricity.
The Y1 capacitor is only rated at 250Vac, that's less than 14 percent of voltage redundancy. In reality the power grid may be poorly regulated such as in some remote regions and the mains voltage can go as high as 250Vac, leaving zero safety redundancy on the sole Y1 capacitor. Is Apple iPhone charge certified for transient immunity standards, such as IEC61000-4-x, Looks like the i-Spec circuit separation page is dead. Ken, keep on tearing them down to the bare metal!
Your posts are thorough, thoughtful, and informative. Cheers. I've been working on the mother of all power supplies. See - TwistVolt on Dragon Innovation crowd funded Tuesday 9/24. Would love to know what you think of it! Why is the blue component a capacitor and not a varistor, Anonymous: you ask why the blue component is a capacitor and not a varistor. It does look a lot like a varistor, and I thought it was one at first. But the X1 Y1 markings are a giveaway that it's a Y capacitor.
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