SmartThings from Samsung and Amazon to join hands to make the Echo even smarter by helping it control the appliances in a house. Further development with SmartThings, the Amazon Echo will be capable of controlling the lights, lamps, speakers and other smart appliances just with a voice command.
SmartThings will be adding support for the Amazon Echo, which can be later be used by the smart devices made by and on standards of SmartThings. The communication in between the two will help Echo make decisions and then revert to the appliances. Apparently, the processing for the smart devices will only be done on Alexa’s processor, not on the cloud. It may remain classified till Alexa and SmartThings start talking in almost every house.
Controlling is no rocket science as well, just like we have asked Alexa to multiply two numbers, the same is going to be in voice commands for switching on and off the lights and controlling other appliances. A simple, “Alexa, turn on the table lamp” command would do the magic here.
The Echo is a powerful AI (Artificial Intelligence) cloud-based speaker with Alexa digital assistant at its core. Those who are familiar with the working of Alexa, it is an Internet-based speaker that can help you do the maths, homework, play the music or even place the orders from Amazon.
The simple yet powerful $179 speaker sounds good as well. Coming in a cylindrical shape, it is more like a non-portable personal assistant.
Alexa can help you by fetching the results from the Wikipedia and other resources to answer a question. For example Who is the CEO of Amazon, Alexa can pull off the result from the company’s database or from the WikiPedia to help you out.
It comes handy as Alexa doesn’t require the user to press any switch or do any operation except saying “Alexa” to activate. The design speaks, how it can hear you from almost any corner of the room. The mics for the Echo speaker has been placed in such a way that they catch the commands from any corner in the room.
However, this may vary with the amount of noise in the room and few other factors. Other than that, Alexa is just another yet better digital voice assistant.
