Ever since Amazon’s Alexa was released back in November 2014, I’ve been afraid of inanimate objects suddenly greeting me or setting my schedules. It’s gotten so bad I’ve decided never to name any future pets or daughters ‘Alexa’, for fear I might suddenly activate a bystanding Alexa-enabled device.
This is only going to get harder now that Amazon has released the Beta of their Alexa Gadgets Toolkit, which developers to create their own Alexa-powered gadgets and connect them to an Echo-enabled device.
Using self-service APIs, which include tech documentation and sample code to oversee the connection between the Echo device and paired gadgets, the Alexa Gadgets Toolkit comes with many gadget interfaces that increase the range of machines Alexa can plug herself into.
You’ll have cuckoo clocks which turn their head whenever you say “Alexa”. There will be Furbies which, if they weren’t creepy before, can now mimic Alexa’s spoken words. Alarms will be more creative, allowing for timers which can activate dog food dispensers or medicine cabinets. Depending on how creative developers get, an untold number of gadgets can help make everyday life more comfortable (or at the very least, a lot more interesting).
Many dancing plush toys and an animatronic Big Mouth Billy Bass using the new Alexa Gadgets Toolkit will be made available later this year. A full list of the gadget interfaces can be found on the developer blog on Amazon webpage.
What would you add Alexa to?
