One of my older Echo Dots recently started acting up. I had been unplugged and boxed away since our move in the spring, however it worked fine before we put it away. Yet now every time I asked it for anything it would start to reply then make a loud popping noise and would shutdown or restart. Sometimes you might be able to get a command or two in but otherwise it did this every time.
My initial digging gave me a few suggestions. One was to make sure I updated the device, so I did, and the issue continued. I tried a different USB cable and charging block, still no luck. Other suggestions included plugging it into an external speaker (which admittedly I didn’t try) to determine if the speaker itself was at fault. But none of them suggested what actually ended up being the solution in my case and which I discovered by accident, so I just wanted to share it for any others who might be in the same boat.
It was the surface it was placed on — glass. I had set it up in our bathroom so my wife could listen to music while getting ready or if I wanted to listen to music or a podcast while in the shower. But the only spot that made sense to place it was in a little glass shelf protruding from the mirror. Once I moved it from there to on top of the toilet’s tank the problem completely went away. Then when I placed it back on the glass shelf it returned. So there’s something about the glass surface, maybe the way it vibrates, that causes the Echo Dot 2nd Gen to reboot.
A seasoned Senior Solutions Architect with 18 years of experience in technology design and implementation. Renowned for innovative solutions and strategic insights, he excels in driving complex projects to success. Outside work, he is a passionate fisherman and fish keeper, specializing in planted tanks.