Amazon Alexa Dot question

[mstudio]

I just received an email from SiriusXM wanting me to subscribe. We have it in my wife's car and like it. I'm thinking of taking their deal for my car. Pretty inexpensive rate and they are giving a free Echo Dot with the subscription.

My question is regarding that intrusive thing called Alexa. Can I just have the Dot be a bluetooth-type speaker so I can stream the XM stations while in the studio? Will I need to activate her in order to do that? I don't need/want to turn her on. Will she still be listening to everything I do and giggling? I realize it would need to be hooked into my network to enable streaming.

I've done some searching but haven't found a difinitive answer yet. Was hoping for some real world experience from someone here.

Thx and Happy New Year!

[graylocks]

you would have to activate the dot but you can turn off the microphone so that it is not listening. my ecobee thermostat is Alexa enabled but i keep its microphone turned off all the time. if it's a 3rd generation Dot the speaker is a big improvement over the 2nd gen.

[Ombligo]

Why not just put Sirius on your phone and stream that to a Bluetooth speaker? Then sell or gift the Dot to someone.

[mstudio]

graylocks, thanks, I was wondering if I had to have the mic on in order to access Sirius.

Ombligo, that's exactly what I was originally thinking when I saw the deal. I don't really need another speaker. I do have it on my phone now using my wife's account and it works fine.

[graylocks]

mstudio wrote:
graylocks, thanks, I was wondering if I had to have the mic on in order to access Sirius.
.

turns out no. i just used the Alexa app to play music through my ecobee where the mic is off. it works. and now i'll turn it off cause it sounds like sh#t! if you wanted to activate Sirius by voice command, though, the mic would need to be on.

[RAMd®d]

I guess you could use the Dot as a sort of hub for Sirius reception, but its speaker is barely tolerable for voice.

I've used it to listen to music, and while I tolerated it, hearing music through it wasn't an enjoyable experience— it was just 'there'. But that may be adequate for one's particular purpose.

The Dot has a 3.5mm jack and BT that allow connection to an external powered speaker, so there's that.