The Curious Case of the Echo Button
Just a toy to play games with Alexa? Or more than meets the eye?
Last week Amazon announced a number of additions to its Echo family, but one stood out to me as being different from the rest — the Echo button.
Amazon describes them as “a new way to play games through your compatible Echo device. Each button illuminates and can be pressed to trigger a variety of game play experiences powered by Alexa”. It demoed them using a Trivia game, with players buzzing in.
While this looks like a fun, it doesn’t seem like anything too revolutionary.
Except when you consider that this is just the first of what they are calling “Alexa Gadgets”. The blog post introducing them detailed lots of interesting things, but the one that got me most excited was this:
Gadget Input API enables you to send inputs from your Alexa Gadget through an Echo device. Specifically, you can take action within your skill as a result of these inputs, and send actions back to your Alexa Gadget.
Think about the Echo Buttons — they don’t just respond to a command to Alexa — they send an input to Alexa. I have Alexa hooked up to lots of devices in my house, but although she can trigger actions for them, none of them can trigger actions for her. So, once physical devices can make Alexa take an action, what does that mean?
Imagine if when you turned on your shower, it sent a trigger to Alexa. Sure, it could trigger off your alarm, but let’s be honest, just because your alarm went doesn’t mean you actually got up. But, now it knows you got up and are in the shower, it’s able to determine that you would likely be arriving down in the kitchen in 20 mins (ok, maybe more for me) so it should start setting up for you in 15 mins — turn on the lights, brew some coffee, get the radio on. Maybe the thermostat will let Alexa know it’s a colder day today, and she’ll check with you if you want the temperature increased downstairs.
Only this particular day when you turn on your shower and Alexa gets the notification, she sees that you have an early appointment and really should have gotten up earlier. So, she knows that your shower will be cut short and the kitchen should start setting up in 5 mins — and that the coffee machine needs to put on a stronger brew.
You cut your shower short and grabbed your coffee, but despite your best intentions when you hop into the car you are still running late. However, turning on your BMW triggers Alexa, who checks your schedule, reads you the traffic report and lets you know your travel time. Then she asks if you would like a message sent saying you’ll be a late, or if you’d just like her to automatically dial you into the meeting at the appropriate time.
It’s great to be able to ask Alexa for things, but shouldn’t a good personal assistant just know what you need?
Having Alexa communicate with the physical world is brilliant — having the physical world communicate back to Alexa is genius. The smart home moves to a whole new level. There are so many possibilities — and most of them are achievable right now with the technology we already have. We might be just playing with it now — but what might be just around the corner? I’m watching this space with excitement.
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