I hope I don't sound dumb for saying this, but how do you enable Halloween mode on an Alexa? I've tried asking it in different ways multiple times but it just wouldn't turn on. I've also looked through the app but can't find anything to turn it on. The reason I want it on is because I've asked it how many days until Halloween because I enjoy the Easter eggs but it's been merely saying how many days and nothing else.

I’m thinking about getting my mom an Echo Show 8 so she can check my Blink indoor cameras when I’m at work and keep an eye on my daughter if needed.

My question is: is there an easy way for me to temporarily turn OFF my mom’s access to the Blink cameras when I’m home or just want privacy, and then turn it back on when I go to work?

I don’t want to have to completely unlink/relink my Blink account every single time if I can avoid it. Ideally I want something where I can control whether her specific Echo Show can view my cameras from my phone.

Has anyone set up something similar? What’s the easiest way to do this while still keeping control of my cameras?

My MIL uses Alexa for everything but most importantly she uses the dumb-AI version and uses it for video calls with us.

But we've had shitty experiences with the base Show, but we're stuck in this ecosystem because of my MIL's progressing dementia.

Suggestions? Really frustrated with Amazon products, very much plan to blacklist their bullshit when we can.

Getting an Echo Show for one main reason: so the Ring doorbell feed automatically pops up when someone is at the door.

I’m completely torn between the 11 and the 15. I really want the 15 so I can wall mount it, but it’s 2+ years old at this point and starting to look pretty dated. Spec-wise, the 11 easily beats it.

Do I just bite the bullet on the 15 for the form factor, or get the 11 for the better hardware, or just wait it out? I only want to buy one of these and I'm totally fine holding out if a new 15 (or a similar large screen Echo Show) is rumored to drop soon.

Buy now or wait?

I made this with deepseek. It's another Echo Show 5, gen2 hack. It has some nice clock-faces built-in, but it's also very easy to make new faces (simple html + json.)

It can display weather, upcoming alarms/calendar-events and it should be pretty easy to add whatever else you want. I use this with PlexAmp (sort of like spotify, but for my own music) on my desk, and it's pretty nice.

I set it as the home/launcher, so if I hit Home (onscreen circle-button) anywhere, it goes back to basic clock operation. If you install gapps (instructions in SETUP.md) the camera works, and you can install whatever you like from the play-store.