Almond Becomes the First Router to Support Amazon Alexa
Almond Makes It Possible to Use Voice to Control Multiple Smart Products At the Same Time
As of May 2016, our Almond routers (Almond 3, Almond+ and Almond 2015) work with Amazon Alexa, giving users a solution to control hundreds of Almond compatible smart home devices using just their voice and an Alexa-enabled device like Amazon Echo, Echo Dot or Amazon Tap. We announced this in our previous Almond 3 launch post, but we wanted to give you more details here in a separate post.
Voice is Essential to Smart Home Ease-of-Use
Securifi was formed with a vision to simplify the connected home. On that journey so far we have integrated a touchscreen into our routers to create the easiest and fastest router setup on the market. We then added a smart hub to our routers to enable automation between multiple smart devices. Our latest product, Almond 3, integrates mesh technology to eliminate the problem of Wi-Fi dead spots. Needless to say, we were super excited when Amazon Alexa became available, and subsequently provided Skills integration, as we understand how voice helps solve many ease-of-use issues and, as such, benefit home automation. We have created a sophisticated home automation platform making it possible to turn lights on/off as doors unlock or sensors trigger. Still, we found some situations requiring manual control –when you find yourself reaching for your phone, looking for and opening the right app, just to turn off your lights, a process that’s much slower than simply flipping an actual switch. Now with Alexa and Echo you can just use simple voice commands to turn those lights off, which is a far more flexible and intuitive way to control your smart home.
Unifying the Fragmented Smart Device Market
Over the last six months or so some individual smart products have started integrating, but we wanted to use Amazon Alexa to extend our connected home vision: Securifi works with most of the key smart home product vendors, like Nest and Philips Hue, so you can control and automate all your disparate smart home products with one app rather than having to open a different app for each product. As part of our solution we designed our own powerful Rules Engine which provides deep IFTTT-like functionality and Scenes, a way to bunch different actions together and to control them all with the tap of one button. By integrating with the Alexa Skills Kit, we’ve made it possible for Scenes and Modes to be activated with simple voice commands, allowing users to control multiple devices and actions. For example, a Party Scene that turns the music on, dims the lights, and sets the thermostat to a lower temperature can be activated on Almond by saying “Alexa, tell Almond to activate Party Scene.” Users just have to enable the Almond “Skill” in the Alexa App to be able to use voice commands across any Alexa enabled device (Echo, Echo Dot and Amazon Tap, etc…).
Since all devices compatible with Almond and its Rules Engine can be controlled, you no longer have to wait for each smart device manufacturer to integrate with Amazon Alexa. Almond has created a compatibility ecosystem for you.
“We’re thrilled that Securifi has expanded its integration with Alexa,” said Rob Pulciani, Amazon Alexa Director. “Now our connected home customers can control multiple devices, sound systems and thermostats with Almond products using just their voice. Having a connected home with Alexa has never been easier.”
This is Just the Beginning
As we said above we are focused on simplifying the connected home with the router as the hub. Moving forward we’ll bring some more very interesting Almond features to the Alexa voice platform. Stay tuned!
