I came away very impressed with Amazon Echo when I reviewed it last month. Although the voice-activated personal assistant worked well in many cases, it always felt like it should be able to do more. In fact, I even mentioned that it would be great if Echo could integrate with home automation products like Nexia.
It looks like Amazon has similar plans for the device, as the company quietly added the ability to use your voice to control Philips Hue lights and switches from WeMo. If you ask Alexa to turn on the lights, for example, she'll first say that she isn't aware of any devices and will tell you the voice command to use to pair up with the WeMo hub. Once you say the command, Alexa gives you instructions to press the button on the WeMo hub and to wait up to 20 seconds for the devices to link up. Unfortunately my home system consists entirely of Nexia devices, so I wasn't able to test out the integration.
We already know that Apple wants to have similar controls over home automation, and Microsoft is looking to get into the arena as well. It would suit Amazon well to be vendor agnostic and branch out to work with all of the big players in the field so customers can be safe in knowing their Echo device will work no matter what technology they want to control.
Source: Amazon.com
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