Alexa portals offering a whole new world of opportunities

I installed an Alexa Portal for my daughter who has a learning disability. She lives independently and I felt it would help us to enhance our communications together as a family.

We chose a video calling hub with a built in Alexa smart assistant. All it requires is a Facebook account to work. You can call anyone on your account via Facebook messenger, or choose family members /friends for a personalised list for speed.

The call can appear on a phone, tablet or portal device and once set-up you can make video calls.

The portal can be put down anywhere in a room and has an ingenious wide-angled AI-powered camera that automatically zooms in or pans out, so I can follow my daughter around the kitchen to enable more effective hands-free communication.

In my experience, it has allowed us to solve problems more easily, for instance we can look at things together and decide what options to take. It also gives me the opportunity to offer reassurance with body language as well as what I’m saying. We can also visually do an activity together, such as cook which is really great.

Whether it’s to benefit a person with a disability or not, this opens up a whole new world of opportunities for families and their loved ones. The system is easy to use with voice recognition to answer questions on anything and everything, plays music of choice, allows you to use timers and alarms, write lists, shopping lists, connect to other “ smart “ products ( lights, thermos, fans etc )….and so on.

Personally, I feel it has been well worth the investment and it’s not a bad price either.