Voice In Canada Flash Briefing #735

Hey there. Hope you’re having a great weekend. It’s Teri Fisher here with your Voice in Canada flash briefing for Sunday.

And, I have a great question here today from the community.

It came from the Facebook page, and if you want to join the Facebook page by the way, or the group I should say, just go to AlexainCanada.ca/Community.

This question comes from Kenn Holmlund, and great question because I love these questions that have to do with routines.

He says, “Can a timer be started in a routine? I want to have a 30 minute timer start at the same time weekdays to let my kids know when it’s time to leave for school.” And Ken, I can certainly relate to that.

He goes on to say, “Our Echo clock is a great visual aid so we can see the timer counting down”, but he wants to automate the process.

Well, we had a couple of people chime in here, and this is a very interesting discussion, because it’s not that simple. Because the problem is, you can’t actually set a timer.

At least not right now as part of a routine, but there are ways around it.

And so, first of all, Mike Keith says, “Not sure if you can set a timer”, and, as I said, the answer is you can’t.

But Mike says, “You could set an alarm each day, 30 minutes prior, and then again, when it would be time to leave, assuming that it is the same time each day.” And certainly you can do that.

So you can have two different alarms go off as a signal for the beginning of that countdown, and the end of the countdown.

It’s not that simple because the problem is you can’t actually set a timer.

Question Can You Use Alexa Timers in Routines

Cathie Althuizen, and I hope I pronounced that right, Cathie. She says, “What if you create a routine that makes an announcement, leave for school in 30 minutes, and then another announcement 30 minutes later, that says, time to go.”

That’s another way that you could certainly do that, or you could potentially even do a combination of those things with the alarm that Mike suggested, and the announcement that Cathie suggested.

And, Pete Bready says, “You can’t set a Alexa timer in a routine, but you can use the wait action to punctuate a series of things that Alexa says”, and that’s another way around it.

Here’s the thing, Ken finally said as a final comment. Well, he uses the Echo clock, which shows a visual countdown, and you know, you could manually start the timer every day, but who wants to do that with a smart home?

And I totally get what you’re getting at there, Ken, because it is nice to have that visual countdown. So, you know, it’s a little bit of give and take there.

Unfortunately, no, you can’t actually do a timer, but as mentioned by Mike, and Cathie, and Pete, there are ways around it, but if you want the visual countdown, at least for now, you’re going to have to start that timer manually.

I love these types of questions. The questions where we can really get into ways that we can practically improve our lives through the use of Alexa.

So if you’ve got any other interesting routines, I’d love to hear about them. Okay?

Have a wonderful, wonderful day, and I will talk to you tomorrow.

Other Useful Resources

Listen on your Echo Device! Easy as 1-2-3!

Voice in Canada Skill Logo1. Open your Alexa app and click on the Menu button > Settings > Flash Briefing.
2. Click on “Add Content” and search for “Voice in Canada”.
3. Click on “Voice in Canada” and the Enable button.

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