The headlines from the past week in the world of the smart home
It’s been a sad week in the smart home world with the news of Anki, the robotics company behind the Alexa-powered Vector bot, shutting down.
However, more positive noises have come out of Samsung HQ with a touted Galaxy Home Mini and the, bonkers, new Sero smart TV; a 43-inch quantum-dot, QLED set that can be rotated from landscape to portrait mode.
For those stories and more, check out our dedicated smart home news page. For everything else you may have missed, read on.
Amazon Spanish skills to hit US
Spanish-speaking Alexa in the US are in for a treat as Amazon has announced the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) with the new Spanish for US voice model.
“Later this year, along with the Echo family of devices, brands such as Bose, Facebook and Sony will bring the devices ‘ Alexa Built-in ‘ and Philips, TP Link and Honeywell Home will bring ‘ Works with Alexa ‘ devices that support Spanish in the United States,” states Alvaro Sahun Pacheco over on the Alexa blog.
In other Alexa localised news, In-skill purchasing (ISP) will soon land in the UK, Japan and Germany.
Toyota adds assistant duo
Toyota has announced that both Apple CarPlay and Amazon Alexa can be added to 2018 Camry and 2018 Sienna vehicles at local dealerships.
“We are always striving to bring highly desirable services to our vehicles,” said Steve Basra, vice president of Connected Technologies for Toyota Motor North America. “This new program enables CarPlay and Amazon Alexa on some of our most popular vehicles already on the road. It’s a great opportunity to surprise and delight our existing customers.”
Caavo adds Sonos to the mix
Caavo, the universal remote / set top box mashup, has added Sonos to its box of tricks. Using your TV, you can skip to the next song, pause, and play music on any Sonos speaker throughout your home, as well as controlling music in every room; play and manage music by selecting the Sonos tile with the room’s name and display the album cover art on your TV.
“Control Center transforms the TV into the first-ever shared home interface,” said Andrew Einaudi, CEO and co-founder of Caavo. “We want everyone to be able to use the TV and everything connected to it. As we expand the Caavo ecosystem of TV and smart home, it is an honor to partner with exciting entertainment brands like Sonos.”
