Guarding your house to charity donations: 5 unique ways you can use your smart speaker

We normally use our smart speakers to play music, set alarms and reminders and handle our other smart home devices. Running on easy voice commands with the integrated virtual assistant, smart speakers have become vital devices in most of our households.

While most of us know the regular uses, there are a whole host of other things your smart speaker can do. We have picked out 5 of the most interesting ones we could find:

Snore to help you fall asleep

This is probably one of the most bizarre features you will ever hear about. Many of us have used the smart speakers to play soothing sounds to help us fall asleep, however, if those do not help you, snoring is something your speaker can do for you.

On command, the speaker can make snoring sounds. The whole idea is to make you feel comfortable, like you would feel at home sleeping next to (or in the next room) to a family member/partner who snores.

Charity donations

This feature is available on Amazon Echo, and to be able to use this one must ensure that they have an active Amazon Pay account. In order to donate, the user has to give a command to Alexa along the lines of 'Alexa, I would like to make a donation.'

After the command, Alexa will ask you the name of the charity you want to donate to and the amount. Once that is done the money will be deducted from your Amazon Pay account.

You can choose a charity organization from more than 300 available options on Amazon's list.

Guard your house

This is possibly one of the most beneficial features of Alexa. If you are going out for a while or going out of town for a few days, you can turn on Alexa Guard before leaving.

After a command like, 'Alexa, I am leaving' is given, the device will become sensitive towards the sounds of a break-in. In case it senses such signs, the owner will be alerted via a notification.

Find your phone

Forgetting where you last kept your phone is a common issue and it happens more often than one would like to admit. This feature lets you to ask the smart speaker to call your number so that you can track your phone down.

Shop on Amazon

Amazon's Smart Speaker allows users to shop products from Amazon Prime. All that one needs to do is turn on voice purchasing in the Alexa app. To shop through Alexa follow these steps:

-- Open the Alexa App

-- Go to menu

-- Tap on settings

-- Select account settings

-- Go to voice purchasing

-- Switch the toggle on

Once this is on, you can ask Alexa to add items to your shopping cart on Amazon. For example, if you ask Alexa to add milk to your shopping cart, Alexa will do that and can place the order on Amazon when you give the command.