Amazon is at CES 2023 in Las Vegas with its Amazon Experience Arena, where the public can experience the possibilities offered by Alexa for the smart homeoffering maximum technology without encumbrance, able to become one with the domestic environment and emerge only during the real needs of the user.
At CES 2023 Amazon has portato Alexa Ambient Home Dev Kit
Every user wants a smart home that works perfectly, with every smart device capable of working in combination with the others. Apparently it seems like a very simple concept, but in reality behind this need (more intelligent devices, even from different companies, capable of working in combination) there are considerable pitfalls and difficulties that have only recently found a solution thanks to the adoption of the standard Matter.
Amazon presented last summer Alexa Ambient Home Dev Kita new set of services and features that extend a variety of Amazon’s voice assistant tools and allow developers to create a home experience at last unified thanks alexa.
At CES 2023, the multinational led by Bezos announced the first three features of the Alexa Ambient Home Dev Kit: the credential sharing; the group synchronization; the features of two-way synchronization of devices. These features will be available in preview as early as this month for developers.
The three features
Specifically, credential sharing simplifies the setup of smart home devices compatible with “Matter over Thread“, making it easier to sync between Alexa and third-party developer apps.
As a result, members no longer need to manually enter their credentials when setting up a new Standard Matter device on Alexa or an existing Thread network.
The synchronization of groups, on the other hand, allows smart device owners to be able to comfortably manage the smart part of the house without having to manually replicate the groups of smart devices in their possession in multiple apps. This is thanks to the synchronization between Alexa and their favorite applications.
Finally, two-way device synchronization is designed to help developers provide customers with the best possible service by synchronizing information such as disabling, enabling ed elimination between Alexa and their apps. Of course, all with the customer’s permission.
Additionally, as users create and edit, Alexa will keep a history of changes in sync between Alexa and the apps.
Wanting to summarize what has been said up to now, these three features of the Alexa Ambient Home Dev Kit are useful as the more smart homes are populated by the most disparate devices of different brands, the more we want to provide customers with the ability to configure and organize these devices in simple and unambiguous way.
At CES 2023 Amazon also talked about the Matter and Alexa standard
Last month Amazon completed a first phase of the launch of the Matter standard integrated with the products of the Echo line. In the spring we will see new configurations for the Matter standard with over thread support, support for iOS and for other types of devices such as thermostats, blinds and sensors.
This multi-protocol action on Echo devices is designed to allow customers to combine their devices into a unified experience without investing in additional equipment or other protocols or media.
Furthermore, there are already several developers who have (or are) integrating the differentiated features of Alexa with their devices with the Matter standard: Eve, Leedarson, Leviton, Midea, Nanoleaf, Meross, Resideo, Sengled, Tuya, Yeelight e Wiz.
However, Amazon has also decided to invest in new tools to help developers build devices more efficiently, to deliver high-quality, differentiated environmental experiences to customers. For instance, the e-commerce giant announced last year that it has partnered with silicon suppliers of the caliber of Beken, Espressif, Nordic, NXP, Realtek, Silicon Labs e Texas Instrumentsnot to mention platform support Frustration-Free Setup.
Frustration-Free Setup is a platform dedicated to developers, which they can access to technical documentation, software e data specifications and start deploying devices Frustration-Free Setup for Matterfollowing the simplified certification instructions when using a pre-certified solution.
Matter Analytics Console
This console, available in preview, notifies developers of important information via metrics of performances such as the latency and the success rate. This data is very useful for delivering high-quality experiences to customers.
But what exactly are these metrics? Basically indications of the quality of service customers experience when interacting with their devices while using Alexa. Matter Analytics Console provides developers with a overview of the collected data which can be viewed in a history that reaches a period ranging from the previous 5 minutes up to 90 days ago.
Thanks to these metrics, developers can identify and fix certain problems in a timely manner.