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Massive Interest in Amazon’s Alexa: Voice Assistant Has Over 1,000 Skills

June 5, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

We live in an all-connected world in which Amazon’s Echo speaker, and its descendants, Tap and Dot, are the royal family. Amazon’s products are growing in popularity as more consumers prefer ‘smart’ speakers for their homes.

But the interest for internet-connected homes has also spurred interest in the developer world in the form of add-ons dubbed “skills.” These allow devs all around the world to teach Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa new tricks, like ordering you a pizza or calling you an Uber.

Today, Amazon announced that the app store for Alexa’s skills – so to speak – has surpassed 1,000. Given that the Echo has only become universally available last June (it was invitation only before that), the new milestone is definitely notable.

At the same time, Alexa’s voice and functionalities have also been integrated into other connected devices, such as the Fire TV; thanks to Amazon’s open platform, third-party hardware makers could also implement the assistant into their products.

What’s even more impressive is the quick acceleration of this third-party “app” ecosystem; only in January of this year, Alexa’s skills section only contained some 130 apps.

In the announcement, Amazon highlighted the more notable additions to Alexa’s selection of skills, such as those from Domino’s, Capital One, Fitbit, SmartThings, Uber, and more.

According to Rob Pulciani, director of Amazon’s Alexa, the community size of the third-party developer around its personal assistant has reached into the “tens of thousands.” That means developers are at least interested in toying around with Alexa, even if not all of them are actually creating new apps.

While Alexa’s capabilities have steadily improved over time, Amazon now needs to solve the problem of discovery. Alexa’s skill section – its personal “app store” that pairs with the connected speaker or other Alexa-powered devices – is at this point merely bare bones.

Search is rocky, and there are no top charts or categories to browse through, as with other app stores. Seeing that there are more than 1,000 apps already, Amazon needs to figure out how to highlight the best of them, so users can actually find them.
Image Source: Wall Street Journal

You Can Control Your Lutron Lights With Amazon’s Alexa Voice Control

April 7, 2016 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

Lutron Electronics, one of the first pioneers in lighting control, has partnered Amazon to integrate its affordably-priced Caséta Wireless system with Amazon’s Alexa. The result is a beautiful and convenient voice control of your home lighting.

By using the free Lutron app, homeowners can adjust the light from anywhere inside or outside the house; they can also use the Lutron Pico® remote control, or select third-party devices.

And now, after the integration with Amazon, customers who own an Amazon Tap, Echo, Echo Dot, or Amazon Fire TV can simply use their voice to control their Caséta Wireless system.

Combining Alexa-enabled devices with Caséta Wireless is an ideal match, as the Alexa-powered gadgets are mostly located in areas where people spend their time when they’re at home – such as the kitchen or the living room.

Whether you’re helping the kids with homework, doing crafts, or watching the TV, all of these occasions are more comfortable and relaxing if the right light is on. All you need to do is adjust it to your linking by the sound of your voice. For those who prefer it, it can also be done by the tap of a button.

Matt Swatsky, director of product management at Lutron, explained that “asking Alexa to control your lights is undeniably powerful and can simplify things like coming home with arms full of kids, pets, and groceries.”

At the same time, Alexa can also be useful to senior citizens who don’t have a lot of mobility. Swatsky added that a smart home is no longer about the wow factor – the products can also change peoples’ lives.

On the other side of the partnership, Charlie Kindel, Director of Amazon Alexa Smart Home, said the Amazon team is “excited that Lutron customers can now control their lights simply by asking Alexa.”

When Caséta Wireless was introduced in 2014, it helped people overcome two problems regarding smart home lighting: the installation challenges and the compatibility with LEDs.

Due to its design, the system doesn’t require in-wall installation or a neutral wire – this saves homeowners the cost and hassle of having to add one.

And as Swatsky pointed out, Caséta Wireless comes with a powerful Pico remote, which is ideal for when you can speak to Alexa. Are the kids asleep or is your spouse in the middle of an important phone call?

You can still access the system via the remote, which can be mounted on a wall or placed on a tabletop pedestal.
Image Source: Smarthome Reviewed

Amazon Sends More Invites for Echo

January 19, 2015 By Deborah Campbell Leave a Comment

Amazon announced the Echo back in 2014 and customers that were interested in buying the device were put on a waiting list. Now, the giant online retailer sent out more invites for Echo and is attracting customers to buy it. The Amazon Echo is a sort of personal assistant and functions as a cylinder-shaped speaker as well.

Some of these devices were already shipped and Amazon even sent out more invitations on Tuesday.

The Amazon website, however, states that the Echo won’t ship out until June, either because the inventory is low or there is a very high demand for it. But customers must decide pretty soon if they choose to purchase the Echo because the invites last for only seven days.

Amazon Echo plays music, tracks news, keeps track of your shopping list, gives you a weather report and can even tell jokes and is considered to be Amazon’s first try at entering the smart home market. The company could also learn a lot from feedback from the users who buy the device by making it available only for a few people at a time and thus, they could polish the device before making it available for everyone.

We had our hands on one of these devices and can give you a short review of what you can expect from it.

The Amazon Echo uses Alexa, which is the voice behind it. The device is voice activated and relies on a cloud to perform different tasks as your personal assistant. Even though she’s pretty limited as of now, she still has some nice functions. Yes, we will call Alexa a “she” from now on, not an “it”.

Even though there are a few problems with voice recognition, it’s still one of the best voice controlled devices we’ve used. It does a good job in understanding what you are saying and it’s even better than Apple’s Siri, Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana personal assistants.

It features seven microphones inside the 9.25 inch cylinder casing. The ring which controls volume on top of the Amazon Echo lights up when you say the word “Alexa”. The light means the device is ready to hear your command and we can honestly tell you that Alexa understood most of the commands we gave to her. You can also say “Amazon” before giving commands but that doesn’t really seem natural. There is no way you can change the gender of the voice or the wake word as of now.

To start using it, you have to connect the Amazon Echo to a Wi-Fi network with the use of an app available on the Amazon Fire, Android, Apple and desktop devices. You can connect directly to it via Bluetooth and use the device as a wireless speaker as well. Unfortunately, even though the device holds seven microphones, we couldn’t use it as a hands free device for our phones. To be fair, it’s still in its early days and this function will probably be made available later.

The Amazon Echo works especially well for receiving a weather forecast both for just one day or the whole week. The device can also tell you the time, set up a timer or alarm, manage a shopping list and give definitions on various words. Alexa can even tell jokes.

The device has to always be plugged in as it doesn’t have a battery of its own. You can move it around your house as long as it can still connect to the Wi-Fi network. If you move it in a place where there is a different network than the one you used before you will have to go through the setup process once more. It’s not very difficult, but it’s inconvenient.

You also get a remote that has a microphone built in it so you can speak to Alexa when you’re very far away from the microphones or the room is very noisy. That being said, we were able to tell Alexa to turn the volume down when music was playing quite loudly, so the internal microphones work really well, partially because they have a noise cancellation feature.

A great limitation at this point is the fact that Alexa can only use Wikipedia and a few other data bases, but not Google or Bing. The device will send a Bing link to your smartphone or tablet if she won’t be able to find what you’re looking for, however.

Alexa is expected to get a lot smarter in the future. She is capable of learning your voice better and there is also a tool for speech-training, but we’re uncertain of how the app works exactly considering that numerous people will talk to her, not just one.

The sound also seems to get distorted on higher volumes despite the speaker being able to produce good bass and projecting the sound at a 360 degree. But the sort of poor sound quality is probably because the speaker is designed mostly with Alexa’s voice in mind. The speaker works great for background music but it most likely won’t be your go to source of entertainment. It’s really hard to listen to music above the 60 percent volume mark as the sound will become very distorted. It’s very possible that the Amazon engineers will fiddle around with the EQ in the future to make it sound better but this is just our assumption.

At a price of $199, Amazon Echo isn’t much of a bargain and while it’s not without its quirks, we do see the potential in the device and there will probably be a time in the future when we will come to use it more. But that depends solely on Amazon and what they decide to improve on it.

Images source: cnet.com

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