Category: Hardware

New generation of Alexa-enabled devices is here!

New Alexa-enabled devices

Last week, Amazon announced the next generation of voice-enabled devices (and tools for devs!). Here’s what we could learn from the official announcement and subsequent media coverage.

Echo Plus: Same form factor as the original Echo device, but enhanced in many ways. It will act as the control center for the home. It can manage over 100 IoT home devices “out of the box” and without the Bluetooth fuss. A simple “Alexa, find my devices” will get them all hooked up. The big question is, when will we start to hear about cheeky neighbours going all Poltergeist on your living room lights, or worse?

Echo new generation: Same functionality of the original Echo device, but smaller, and covered in cloth (different colors). It will sell for $99, according to The Verge.

Echo Spot: Finally! Some years ago I fell in love with a device/idea called Chumby. It was some sort of potato shaped, Internet-enabled alarm clock. Sadly (or not!) I never got one. Echo Spot will fill that gap in my life. A device slightly bigger than a baseball with a nice screen that you can talk to, that can wake you up.

I foresee the Echo Spot being the bestseller of the 3. So for us devs, this means we must enhance our Skills with visual functionality (a.k.a. cards).

Internet of Voice Challenge @ Hackster.io

Internet of Voice Challenge
Internet of Voice Challenge

As we said last week, Amazon is investing heavily (and working hard, too) towards a world of things connected to the Internet where we interact with objects (and robots…) with natural language. With voice.

A new initiative in this front is the “Internet of Voice Challenge“, run jointly by Hackster.io, the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Amazon.

There are two categories:

Alexa Skills Kit and Pi

Finding innovative and clever ways of integrating Alexa Skills into maker projects.

The criteria will be:

  • Use of a Raspberry Pi (20 points)
  • Creativity (15 points)
  • Use of Voice User Interface (VUI) best practices (15 points)
  • Story/Instruction – Show how you created your project, including images, screenshots, and/or video (10 Points)
  • Project Documentation including VUI diagram (10 Points)
  • Code – Include working code with helpful comments (15 Points)
  • Published Skill (20 Points)

Alexa Voice Services and Pi

Making devices come alive by adding voice interactions.

And the criteria:

  • Use of a Raspberry Pi (20 points)
  • Creativity (15 points)
  • Use of Voice User Interface (VUI) best practices (15 points)
  • Story/Instruction – Show how you created your project, including images, screenshots, and/or video (10 Points)
  • Project Documentation including VUI diagram (10 Points)
  • Code – Include working code with helpful comments (15 Points)
  • BONUS – Published skill (10 points)

There’s 3 prizes for each category. This is the part that Amazon covers, so you won’t be surprised by this kind of bounty: Trophy, Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, $1,500 Gift Card for the first prize.

You can enter here. Submissions close on 1st August 2016. So far, 119 contestants, no projects submitted yet.