Echo Turns on by itself

[barnabas1969]

Man, I'd have that stuff on battery backups anyway for surges/brown outs.

My PCs are (not HTPCs); everything else of importance is just surge protectors. That would get too expensive. Plus, if the power goes off I miss a recording - not the end of the world.

Well, I have my whole home theater setup (TV, AVR, HTPC, etc) in the main viewing area on a big UPS. I also have a UPS on my router, switch, HDHR Prime tuners, TA's, cable amplifier, etc. and another UPS on my desktop PC. But I don't have a UPS on the other four TV's in the house.

[Sammy2]

Sort of laughable to use an UPS to keep a device OFF but it just depends. How much is that TV worth? Some smaller ones aren't too much more than the UPS itself so why bother.

[barnabas1969]

Sort of laughable to use an UPS to keep a device OFF but it just depends. How much is that TV worth? Some smaller ones aren't too much more than the UPS itself so why bother.

Three of the TV's were purchased at a Black Friday sale at Walmart a couple of years ago. They are 32" Emerson LCD's. I think I paid around $150 each. The fourth TV is an older 20" CRT that I think I paid $70 for back in 2007.

The TV's aren't worth protecting with a UPS. It seems to be a simple request to have the Echo remain off after a power failure.

[Sammy2]

Sort of laughable to use an UPS to keep a device OFF but it just depends. How much is that TV worth? Some smaller ones aren't too much more than the UPS itself so why bother.

Three of the TV's were purchased at a Black Friday sale at Walmart a couple of years ago. They are 32" Emerson LCD's. I think I paid around $150 each. The fourth TV is an older 20" CRT that I think I paid $70 for back in 2007.

The TV's aren't worth protecting with a UPS. It seems to be a simple request to have the Echo remain off after a power failure.

Agreed. Or have it user selectable.

[barnabas1969]

Or, if they never change the behavior, a large enough capacitor placed in parallel with the power supply output would keep the voltage close enough to 5V during a momentary power outage to prevent the Echo from power cycling. Simply using a multimeter to determine the current draw when the Echo is "off" would give you the info needed to calculate the correct size capacitor. It would only need to be large enough to hold up the voltage for a second or two. Power outages longer than 2 seconds are rare in my area. I've considered adding a capacitor to the clock in my stove, but have never taken the time to do it. I hate setting that clock all the time. The clock in the microwave never seems to get reset, so it must already have a holdup capacitor.

[Sammy2]

If I had inconsistent power like that every day I'd do something on a "whole house" scale. I guess we have it good out here as our power is usually on all the time with very little variation although sometimes in the dog days of summer we get some "brown outs" where the voltage is lower than intended which probably doesn't even effect low voltage DC devices because the transformer just smooths it out.

[barnabas1969]

I have a whole home surge protector connected to my breaker box, plus surge protectors on all the electronics. I also have gas tube surge protectors on the cable and antenna leads that come into my house, as well as an Ethernet surge protector between my cable modem and my router (I know quite a few people who had their router fried by a lightning storm because they didn't have one of these).

A "whole house" UPS and/or line conditioner would be very, very, very expensive.

[RealCodeGuy]

It's definitely a Florida thing. But still, EVERY OTHER APPLIANCE I OWN RETURNS TO A POWER-OFF STATE after a power interruption. This was something that I reported during the Echo beta, and it's STILL NOT FIXED. In fact, the ONLY devices I own that even have an OPTION to power ON after a power failure are my PC's (it's usually a BIOS option).

My refrigerator and freezer return to an on state after a power interruption and I am glad for that, but the Echo definitely needs to return to the off state. I have 4 Echos and live in the country with a small electrical coop. My Echos are ALWAYS on, very annoying.

[Phil Seastrand]

If they fix this, I hope it's an option. I have my Echo plugged into the USB port on the TV. This way when I turn on the TV, the Echo turns on automatically. I don't want to lose this functionality!