Alexa drop-in setup

[Midsmartin]

My elderly parents use an Amazon Echo that I bought for them. As my mother's sight is very poor, she can use it to listen to music, and for Audio books.

Now they are using it, I'm looking at extra functionality. "Drop-in" would allow me to use it as an intercom to talk to them.

My question is what the minimum requirements are to set this up, if anyone knows? I'm reading all over the internet and making progress, but am still confused.

Being 90+ they do no have a smartphone, but we have a spare old phone here I could donate, currently without a SIM

As I understand it, Alexa uses the phone number as some sort of identifier for contacts to determine who is allowed to communicate via drop-in - it doesn't actually make phone calls when using Drop-in.
So logically a cheap PAYG SIM, just to provide a phone number, would allow me to set up Alexa for this. If it runs out of credit, it shouldn't matter.
But if I want to go further so they can make phonecalls by voice , then this spare phone would need credit (or a contract), and would need to remain turned on, presumably in their house?

Does anyone know if I have this right?

To rephrase: I believe that
(1)'drop-in' communicates over the internet, a bit like a voip call, but a mobile phone number is required for initial configuration, but possibly not for anything else.
(2) for them to initiate a phone call by voice, which can also be done, the Echo device communicates via the Alexa app on a phone to make a phonecall. Presumably the phone needs to be local!

[BigB]

My elderly parents use an Amazon Echo that I bought for them. As my mother's sight is very poor, she can use it to listen to music, and for Audio books.

Now they are using it, I'm looking at extra functionality. "Drop-in" would allow me to use it as an intercom to talk to them.

My question is what the minimum requirements are to set this up, if anyone knows? I'm reading all over the internet and making progress, but am still confused.

Being 90+ they do no have a smartphone, but we have a spare old phone here I could donate, currently without a SIM

As I understand it, Alexa uses the phone number as some sort of identifier for contacts to determine who is allowed to communicate via drop-in - it doesn't actually make phone calls when using Drop-in.
So logically a cheap PAYG SIM, just to provide a phone number, would allow me to set up Alexa for this. If it runs out of credit, it shouldn't matter.
But if I want to go further so they can make phonecalls by voice , then this spare phone would need credit (or a contract), and would need to remain turned on, presumably in their house?

Does anyone know if I have this right?

To rephrase: I believe that
(1)'drop-in' communicates over the internet, a bit like a voip call, but a mobile phone number is required for initial configuration, but possibly not for anything else.
(2) for them to initiate a phone call by voice, which can also be done, the Echo device communicates via the Alexa app on a phone to make a phonecall. Presumably the phone needs to be local!

My elderly mum has an Alexa we set up for her. It is tied to her non smart mobile phone, which has us and a number of other names & numbers as contacts.

I call my mum from my Amazon Alexa app on my smartphone, selecting my mum as a contact from my phone book (it has a tick against her name in this context, which I think identifies her as an Amazon/Alexa account user). I could call my mum by voice from our Alexa but it would then look for the contact details in the smartphone tied to our account - my wife's I think. Yes it uses IP for connecting. When I call it announces "Call from BigB" so must get name lookup from phone contacts into Alexa (unsure how/when that works on a non-smart phone setup)

I haven't tried calling out from my mum's Alexa, which in theory would use her contacts. If local and connected I would expect it to use contacts from the local smartphone. In this case, my mum's is not smart phone and I'm unsure if it would work (though it does seem to pick me up when I voice inbound). Hmm. Will try voice out at the weekend.

Edit: I'm using Call (not Drop-In) to contact my mum - apologies. It is using IP though, not generating charges. I'll explore Drop-In this weekend.

hth
BigB

[neversay]

As an aside, I have just installed two echo flex plug-in Alexa devices on the landing and bottom of the stairs for my elderly mother. If she falls or gets into difficulty then she can use Alexa call for help. For £10 each (on offer) they give her and us some reassurance.