[wan23]

This seems like the biggest feature these devices have been missing. Some use cases off the top of my head:

* Alexa, call my phone (because I can't find it)

* Alexa, call for Chinese food (okay everyone call out what you want)

* Alexa, send a message to my son -- "I've fallen and I can't get up"

[t0mbstone]

You can enable "Alexa, find my phone" by installing the skill and android/ios app called "Trackr"

Once it is set up, you can say, "Alexa, tell Trackr to find my phone", which will tell you the address your phone was last seen. You can also say, "Alexa, tell Trackr to ring my phone", which will make your phone ding even if it is on silent.

The "Help! I've fallen and can't get up!" functionality can be had by installing the "Ask My Buddy" skill, which will let you designate emergency contacts which you can notify by voice.

It's not chinese food, but both Dominos and Pizza Hut now have Alexa skills available which will let you order by voice, as well.

[simcop2387]

I strongly suspect that the Chinese food problem is going to be solved by Amazon restaurants once it gains more areas and traction. Since they have the menus already they can handle the entire ordering process.

[vidarh]

> It's not chinese food, but both Dominos and Pizza Hut now have Alexa skills available which will let you order by voice, as well.

In the UK, Just Eat has an Alexa skill - they're one of two major "takeaway aggregators" here.

[scosman]

Or as an intercom:

* Alexa, call the living room: hey everybody, dinner's getting cold!

[crazcarl]

You can use the drop in feature for this, right?

Allow drop in between your devices in your home, and you can call one from another. Maybe they'll allow call groups and you can call to every room at once.

[danielhooper]

More like "tell everybody the dinner's getting cold" and Alexa will figure out what room they're in ;)

[ourmandave]

More like send them a text message to the device they're currently on.

[blastofpast]

#1 solution that I've been using, is setup an ifttt skill, then "alexa, trigger call my phone"

[jjeaff]

I use the trackr skill. Advantage being that even if your phone is on silent, it will ring it.

[djhworld]

I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of applications ("skills") out there already that do the first one in your list.

Third idea is really interesting though, maybe calling the emergency services could be good in that situation too

[smacktoward]

#3 turns out to be complicated to do in practice, because the API Alexa exposes to allow third-party "skills" to handle voice commands requires them to be phrased in a pretty specific format that includes the name of the skill (see https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-sk...). Which is a big ask for a user in a high-stress emergency situation, especially if the skill is one they aren't going to have been routinely interacting with before then. (And a 911 type application is sort of the definition of an app the user will not be routinely interacting with.)

I tinkered a little bit with this idea when the Echo Dot came out, but these limitations more or less killed my interest in exploring the concept further.