I have several Echo smart speakers in my house. Amazon has continued to make the prices of these devices relatively cheap to try to lock people into its smart home ecosystem. I don’t trust my Echo speakers much anymore, so I wanted to see if I could use them in another way.
I Finally Discovered How Much My Echo Devices Call Home
Endless calls to advertising services were the last straw
Have Pi-hole set up on my home network to help stop ads and trackers. I was curious to see how often my Echo devices tried to call home and was quite surprised by the results. My Echo Show 5 was constantly make DNS requests to advertising serviceseven when it was idle.
I had already started to stop using Echo devices. Amazon’s poor privacy record, Alexa’s closed ecosystem, and the inconvenience of using voice commands meant that Echo devices They were not the ideal smart home control system I expected them to be when I first bought them. The Pi-hole results only confirmed my decision to remove them from my smart home.
I managed to jailbreak a couple of my Echo Show 5 devices and reuse them as Home Assistant panelsbut I also had several Echo Dot smart speakers in various rooms. I was wondering if there was a way to disconnect them from Amazon and still be able to get something out of them.
An Echo is a reasonable Bluetooth speaker
I mainly used them for music anyway.
I can’t remember the last time I used any of my Echo devices for control my smart home devices. I firmly believe that smart home automation is preferable to control, and using voice commands always feels a little strange. I’d rather have the lights turn on automatically than have to say a request out loud.
The only real use my Echo devices have is playing music. While an Echo Dot is quite small and the sound quality isn’t the best, it’s fine for listening to music while cooking or in a child’s room. They’re connected to Apple Music, so I can play anything from Apple Music’s extensive catalog, as well as my own custom playlists.
While playing music this way relies on streaming music from the cloud, my Echo Dot smart speakers can also be used as Bluetooth speakers. You can pair an Echo with your phone or laptop by simply saying “Alexa, pair Bluetooth” and then using discovery on your device. I was wondering if I could still use them as Bluetooth speakers without them being connected to the cloud.
Pair Bluetooth before blocking the Internet
My phone stayed paired even though the Echo was disconnected
My router gives me the option to block internet access from specific devices, so I knew I could disconnect each Echo Dot from the cloud so it couldn’t communicate with Amazon’s servers, making it a dumb device. I wasn’t sure if doing so would prevent my Echo devices from working as Bluetooth speakers.
After some research and experimentation, I discovered that it is possible to use my Echo Dot smart speakers as Bluetooth speakerseven when they are disconnected from the Internet. The trick is to pair the Echo with the device you want to use to play music before disconnecting it from the internet.
With the Echo disconnected from the internet, I couldn’t pair it with my phone or laptop via Bluetooth. However, if I paired it first, the pairing was remembered even when the Internet went out. I could then connect my phone or laptop to the Echo Dot and use it as a standard Bluetooth speaker whenever I wanted.
It means that now I can play apple music or any other audio source through my Echo Dot devices via Bluetooth. They’re disconnected from the internet, so I don’t have to worry about Amazon listening to everything I say or being bombarded with ads, but I can still use them to play music.
A Bluetooth speaker is better than electronic waste
It’s better than throwing away the Echo
An Echo Dot isn’t a great speaker, but using it as a silly Bluetooth speaker is a better option than just throwing it away. I already have the devices, so being able to use them is preferable to simply adding a mountain of e-waste.
Since I only used them to play music anyway, I certainly don’t lose anything and I no longer have to worry about Amazon ads and trackers. I don’t even have to worry about relying on Alexa skills to be able to play music from various streaming services. Any audio that I can play on my phone or computer, I can play through the Echo Dot.
My smart speaker is dumb
Turning a smart speaker into a dumb one may seem counterintuitive, but I didn’t get any real benefit from the smart features of my Echo devices. I have I built my own smart speaker which can run locally, so I don’t need Alexa anymore. This way, I can still use the speakers I already have.
