Nice idea, have often found myself groping for some skill name. Should have been done sooner.
Amazon Streamlines Building Smart Home Alexa Skills
by Eric Hal Schwartz in Voicebot.ai
Alexa developers can now combine their apps with smart home devices. Amazon had been piloting the Multi-Capability Skills feature for some time, but the option is now generally available to developers.
MERGING VOICES
Until now, an Alexa developer would need one app to handle smart home capabilities of a device, and another with a different name for features that Alexa’s smart home API didn’t support. With Multi-Capability Skills, both sides are combined into a single voice app, handling both custom skills and the smart home skills built into Alexa. It basically makes an Alexa skill flexible enough to handle custom commands within the existing framework of the voice app. Most smart home devices have an on and off switch, for instance, but a command to change lighting colors is only useful for the relevant devices. With the new feature, both aspects can be included under one Alexa skill.
“With MCS, customers no longer need to search for or enable multiple skills to access all the features of their Alexa-connected device,” Amazon explained in its announcement. “MCS removes the friction of customers needing to remember different skill names, allowing customers to access all the expanded smart home features with a single invocation name. For example, by building a multi-capability skill, Dyson enabled its customers to interact more naturally with their Alexa-connected devices. Customers can control their Dyson fans with commands like “Alexa, set the fan speed to 5,” or “Alexa, set Oscillation to wide,” and set night modes and quiet modes in their daily routines, all features previously not available in a single skill experience.” .... '
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment