It’s Mardi Gras weekend (Happy Mardi Gras), and if you’re looking to get your smart home in the spirit, you may want an Amazon Echo nearby.
A smart speaker can control a light and can play some music, but this weekend for Mardi Gras, you can merge the two and get certain breeds of a smart speaker in on the action with a bit of disco flair.
Amazon has switched on a special Mardi Gras mode for its Alexa smart assistant, allowing you to have a bit of a Mardi Gras conversation with an Echo smart speaker, or something else that is compatible with the Alexa smart speaker range.
Much like how you can ask Alexa for information about the news, weather, and more, Amazon Australia has added a variety of questions and answers for the Mardi Gras, including Alexa’s drag queen name, what you should wear for Mardi Gras, fun facts about the event, as well as time and information for the parade if you happen to be going. You can ask Alexa all of these things, and even learn the history of the Mardi Gras, or simply just wish a Happy Mardi Gras to Alexa.
In fact, depending on how much you want to get in on the fun, you might be able to program a routine for an Alexa speaker that not only wishes you Happy Mardi Gras, but then turns the lights down low (if you have smart lighting) and turns on something fun to listen and dance to.
One thing we haven’t confirmed is whether Alexa will be able to stream the Mardi Gras live, but it could definitely remind you to switch on SBS to check out the Mardi Gras live for yourself on February 29 from 7.30 PM.
Alternatively, you could just add it to the list of things Alexa can do, which these days is growing to be quite a bit, too. We suspect this one will stick around past Mardi Gras weekend, though, so if you don’t get to ask Alexa about Mardi Gras in the next few days, you can probably try it if you do get the chance to later on, as well.
