Amazon expands its Sidewalk IoT network with an enterprise-grade bridge

Back in 2019, Amazon first announced its Sidewalk network, a new low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless protocol and network for connecting smart devices — and keeping them online when your own WiFi network, for example, goes down, by piggybacking on your neighbor’s network. Since last year, Amazon has been turning its Echo devices into Sidewalk bridges and select Ring and Tile devices can now access the network. Now, Amazon is launching its first professional-grade Sidewalk device meant to cover large areas like a university campus or park.

The full name for the new device is a mouthful: the Amazon Sidewalk Bridge Pro by Ring. It could be installed inside but is mostly meant to be set up outside — and ideally on a high spot — and can cover hundreds of devices up to five miles away (depending on the local circumstances, of course).

To test the devices, Amazon partnered with Arizona State University, which will install these new Sidewalk bridges on light poles on its Tempe campus. The University Technology Office plans to use it as a proof-of-concept with plans to connect sunlight and temperature sensors, CO2 detectors and particle counters.

Image Credits: Amazon

Amazon is also partnering with Thingy, an IoT company that specializes in environmental monitoring, to install its air quality monitoring tools to alert first responders of potential wildfires.

“Amazon Sidewalk Bridge Pro brings us the power of [Long Range] in a massive number of needed locations, easy integration with our existing applications in AWS, and trusted security for the devices and applications. We are very excited to work with Amazon Sidewalk to measure air quality and wildfires with our sensors and help solve the connectivity challenges for these critical applications,” said Scott Waller, CEO and co-founder of Thingy.

But beyond the device itself, it’s the fact that Amazon continues to invest in the Sidewalk ecosystem that’s most important here.

“We’re building a network, we’re enabling actors to help the IoT industry,” Stefano Landi, the director of Amazon Sidewalk, told me. “At the end of the day, if we want to drive the proliferation of smart and connected devices everywhere, you need to have the right network. If you talk to IoT developers today, yes, there are many options, but either it’s very expensive, from a connectivity perspective vs. cellular, or the range is limited, or it’s draining the battery, or it’s just that the overall development cycle is too complex. So we felt that we should invest and that’s what we’ve done and we continue to invest in enabling these networks so that the IoT community can build any type of application: consumer, enterprise, public sector. ”

Landi noted that only a few months after launching the network, the company now has very strong residential coverage in more than 100 major U.S. metro areas. In part, of course, that’s because there are a lot of Echo devices in America’s homes and unless users opt out, most modern Echo smart speakers now have Sidewalk enabled by default. Not everybody is comfortable with that, though Amazon would argue that it designed its network to be privacy-first and that it won’t use a lot of bandwidth (it’s mostly for passing alerts, not your Ring camera’s video feed, after all). But it’s a fair guess that most users aren’t even aware of Sidewalk to begin with.

Covering a residential area is one thing, though. With the Sidewalk Bridge Pro, businesses can now also cover entire swaths of land to connect their sensors. There seems to be some demand for this, because Landi noted that “more than a few thousand companies” have already reached out to Amazon to ask about commercial use cases — mostly in connection with AWS IoT, the company’s cloud-based managed IoT service. A lot of this interest, Landis said, is coming from companies that want to build public sector solutions, mostly around smart city services.

“The Sidewalk Bridge Pro is a professional-grade bridge that is exactly tailored to be deployed outside of those [residential areas],” explained Landis. “So that now you have coverage pretty much everywhere. Think about commercial centers, parks, city parks, state parks, municipal parks, wildness areas, commercial area, and so on. Now you really bring that ubiquitous connectivity, so when you’re there, building a solution, you know that coverage is going to be pretty much anywhere that you need it.”

Landis noted that while he expects most users to install the bridge outdoors, it can also used indoors to cover a warehouse or a large store. And even though it’s explicitly called the ‘Pro,” we shouldn’t expect the company to launch a consumer-style “non-pro” version anytime soon. That’s what the Echo and Ring devices are for, after all.

Amazon to lower its cut of Alexa skill developer revenue starting in 2022

Amazon is joining other tech giants by lowering its cut of developer revenue generated by voice apps, known as Alexa skills, which run on Amazon’s smart speakers and other Alexa-powered devices. The company this week announced it would next year reduce its commission from 30% to 20% for Alexa skill developers who earn less than $1 million in revenue through things like Skill purchases (paid installs), in-skill purchases (the Alexa equivalent of in-app purchases) and skill subscriptions.

The changes will go into effect starting in the second quarter of 2022, and will be joined by an expansion of developer benefits designed to help third-party developers generate traffic and increase their skills’ visibility. Amazon says developers who generate less than $1 million in the previous calendar year, as well as new Alexa developers, will be eligible for the new program.

The update to Amazon’s commission structure for Alexa developer revenue follows similar moves made by other tech giants, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

Just over a year ago, Apple responded to the increased regulatory scrutiny of its App Store business by dropping its commission rate to 15% for small businesses developers with under $1 million in App Store revenues over the course of a year. Previously, those developers had to pay Apple’s standard 30% commission. Google soon followed suit with a similar program for Google Play which lowered its cut to 15%, with a slight differentiation as to how it calculated when the lowered commissions would apply. Both companies have since gone on to carve out further exceptions to their standard commission rates for select categories of apps, including news publishers and other subscription apps.

In addition, Microsoft this year updated its revenue share terms to more favorable rates, with an 85/15 revenue split for app developers using its payments platform and an 88/12 split for game developers.

Amazon’s Alexa platform, however, isn’t quite in the same category as these other, larger app ecosystems.

While the company had originally planned for a voice app catalog to rival any other app store, the reality is that few developers have been able to capitalize on Alexa’s sizable footprint in U.S. consumers’ homes to create profitable businesses.

In fact, Amazon has struggled over the years with skill discovery, as studies found that Alexa device owners largely used their smart speakers and screens for their built-in functions — like controlling smart home devices, playing music, making shopping lists, setting timers, listening to news and getting quick updates on things like the weather or sports scores, for example. Even voice-based shopping, which Amazon had hoped would take place through Alexa devices, never fully took off.

In other words, Amazon’s adjustment to its commission rates can’t be viewed in the same light as the changes to other app stores’ policies. While, to some extent, Amazon likely feels pressure to follow market trends, it clearly also hopes that lowered commissions could incentivize Alexa developers to build for its platform.

In the same announcement, Amazon also said it will roll out more benefits designed to increase developers’ potential revenue under the new program that begins next year. These additional perks could be worth “up to an additional 10 percent” of a developer’s potential revenue, Amazon noted. The benefits will include incentive programs, personalized feedback to help developers optimize their skills, help identifying monetization opportunities, and more.

Amazon has repeatedly tried direct payments for top skill developers over the years. It’s unclear for now if the new incentives will be different, or just more of the same. Amazon said it will share more details about the program closer to its launch next year.

The company over the past year, has tried to bring back interest in skill development, by introducing more opportunities to make Alexa skills profitable. It launched Paid Skills, where consumers pay upfront to access the add-on voice app, introduced Alexa Shopping Actions to allow developers to sell from Amazon.com within their skill (and earn affiliate income), expanded access to in-skill purchases to more international developers, and reduced the cost of hosting skills to nearly $0.

 

 

Amazon launches a $70 air quality monitor for Alexa

Amazon unloaded a whole slew of new smart home devices back in late September, but a smattering of products are still trickling out ahead of the holidays. Certainly a Smart Air Quality Monitor isn’t as exciting as, say, a giant Echo Show, home robot or even a thermostat, but the at least the inherent value in such a product it clear.

The device is designed to measure the air for particulate matter, including carbon monoxide, dust and volatile organic compounds – essentially chemicals in the air that could harm you. There’s also built in temperature and humidity detection. As the product page notes, the device doesn’t have a built-in microphone or speaker, meaning it relies on a connected Echo device or the Alexa app to send alerts when something is off. So, one fewer microphone in your house. That’s a plus.

The company says the device was the product of user feedback during a testing period, noting,

By making small adjustments like venting rooms more frequently, opening windows while cooking, and opting to turn on air purifiers and humidifiers, testers experienced a noticeable improvement in their overall air quality. With these small adjustments, they also told us they were able to breathe easier in their homes and sleep better throughout the night.

Along with alerts, it also gauges changes over time to the levels it monitors, so users can see how different activities impact these issues. The Smart Air Quality Monitor is up for pre-order today and starts shipping next month.

Apple debuts a $4.99 per month Apple Music Voice plan, designed mainly for HomePod or AirPods use

In 2019, Amazon introduced a more affordable way to stream Amazon Music in their home with the launch of a free, ad-supported music service that streamed over its Echo speakers. Today, Apple is catching up with its debut of a new, lower-cost version of its Apple Music subscription it calls the “Voice plan.” Unlike Amazon’s service, the Voice plan is not free. Instead, it’s a more affordable, $4.99 per month ad-free subscription that limits consumers to only being able to access the Apple Music via Siri voice commands.

Explained the company at its October event today, the new Voice plan will allow customers, in 17 countries to start, to use Siri to play songs, playlists, and all stations in Apple Music when the service launches later this fall. This will also include access to a series of new playlists based on moods and activities, as well as personalized mixes and genre stations. That means you’ll now be able to ask Siri to play you music for a dinner party or something that would help you to wind down at the end of the day, for example. Hundreds of new playlists will be available, said Apple.

Apple Music rivals, including Spotify, Amazon Music, and Pandora already offer such a feature — and have for years. So this is a matter of Apple playing catch up in the space with its own expanded set of editorially crafted mood and activity playlists. Currently, its editorial selections are more limited to its “Made for You” lineup which includes personalized playlists like your Favorites Mix, Chill Mix, New Music Mix and Get Up Mix.

While Apple says the new Voice plan can be used to access Apple Music across “all your Apple devices,” it’s clearly been designed with HomePod in mind — similar to Amazon’s free music streaming for Echo. If using a phone, tablet or computer, it wouldn’t necessarily make sense to speak to Siri to play music when you have a device with a screen. However, the service could possibly be interesting to those who primarily listen to Apple Music via their AirPods — and don’t mind speaking all their commands.

Apple says the service will also work via CarPlay, in addition to iPhone and other devices like iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch.

Subscribers will see a customized app interface that displays suggestions based on their music preferences and a queue of their recently played music through Siri. There will also be a section called “Just Ask Siri,” which teaches users how to optimize Siri for Apple Music.

The new plan joins the other Apple Music subscriptions, the Individual plan and Family plan, at $9.99 per month or $14.99 per month respectively. Like the Individual plan, the new Voice Plan is also limited to just 1 person per subscription, Apple said. It provides access to the full Apple Music catalog of over 90 million songs.

Image Credits: Apple

At launch, it will be available in Australia, Austria, Canada, China mainland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S. The company didn’t offer an exact launch date besides “later this fall.”

Apple said it will market the service to non-subscribers who ask for music through Siri. They’ll be able trial the service for 7 days for free, with no auto-renewal.

To complement the launch of the new service, Apple also announced new, third-gen AirPods and more colorful lineup of HomePod mini smart speakers.

Apple October Event 2021

Why Amazon built a home robot

iRobot’s CEO once told me, with a wink, that he didn’t become a truly successful roboticist until he became a vacuum salesman. It’s a good line, and one that betrays some fundamental truths about the industry. Robots are hard, and in a lot of ways home robots are doubly so.

That no one has managed to crack the code beyond the wild success of robotic vacuums like the Roomba is not for lack of trying. To date, it’s largely been the realm of startups like Anki and Jibo (or the rare exception of the Bosch-created Kuri), but today, Amazon announced that it’s throwing its own tremendous resources behind the problem.

Image Credits: Amazon

In fact, it’s doing more than that. The company just announced its first robot, Astro. The product is taking its first baby steps to market as part of Amazon’s Day One Edition program. Previously Amazon has used the platform in a manner akin to Kickstarter or Indiegogo, where customers effectively vote with their preorders. The new robot, which shares a name with the Jetsons dog, a track on the White Stripes debut and major league baseball team in Houston, will be available on a limited basis later this year. Astro is, far and away, the most ambitious device to be launched with the program, which has thus far included things like a receipt printer and smart Cuckoo clock. It’s also the most expensive, with a price tag of $999.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The robot serves three primary functions at launch:

  1. Home security
  2. Monitoring loved ones
  3. Offering a kind of mobile version of the in-home Alexa experience

The company begun work on the robot roughly four years ago, leveraging different Amazon departments to build a fully realized home robot.


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“We talked about AI, computer vision and processing power, and one of the topics that came up was robotics,” Amazon VP Charlie Tritschler tells TechCrunch. “How has robotics changed to make it maybe possible for consumers. We have a lot of experience using robotics in our fulfillment center, of course, but we thought about what could you do for the consumer in the home to make things more convenient or provide more peace of mind. That started us thinking about it, and by the end we were saying, ‘jeez, does anybody think we won’t have robotics in the home in five to 10 years?’ ”

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Amazon Robotics — which began in 2012 with the company’s acquisition of Kiva Systems — formed a sounding board for the consumer team’s ideas. But the company’s existing robotics are industrial and primarily focused on getting packages delivered in the least amount of time possible. Ultimately, Amazon said it had to build many of Astro’s components from scratch — including, most notably, the SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) system it uses to map and navigate the home.

That last bit struck me as particularly surprising, given not just how complex an undertaking it is (it’s something iRobot has effectively been iterating on for a decade), but also given some of the robotic technologies Amazon currently houses. Most notably, the company acquired Canvas, a fully autonomous warehouse cart startup, in 2019. But Amazon insists that the new SLAM system was built from the ground up, and while it considered making robotic startup acquisitions, it ultimately didn’t do so in order to build Astro. Other in-house technologies did factor in, however, including Ring’s security monitoring and various Alexa and home technologies, built into the robot, which features Amazon’s smart assistant.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

I had the opportunity to interact with Astro last week, and the robot’s got a bit of a dual personality, from that perspective. The robot’s primary personality is best described as something akin to R2-D2/BB8 or Wall-E. Its face, which is effectively a screen or a tablet, sports a pair of minimalist eyes — like a set of lowercase, bolded letter “o”s. They blink and dart around from time to time, but they’re nowhere near as expressive as what Anki hired a team of ex Pixar and Dreamworks animators to create with Cozmo.

This is augmented by the occasional bleeps and bloops, which bring to mind the aforementioned Star Wars droids. The robot can be summoned with a “hey Astro,” but when you need to converse more directly, that requires an “Alexa,” at which point, the familiar voice assistant takes over.

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Beyond offering some personality, Astro’s 10-inch touchscreen face also serves as a standard Echo Show display, so you can do things like watch a movie, teleconference and control your smart home. The screen moves on its own and can be manually tilted 60 degrees for a better look. The screen also supports Amazon’s new Visual ID facial recognition to personalize interactions with Astro.

There are a pair of speakers on-board, as well. Though the robot itself is surprisingly quiet (it’s no robotic vacuucm). In fact, Amazon tells me that they had to introduce sound a la an electric car, so you know when it’s cruising around the house. You do hear the occasional servo sound, however, when it pivots to turn by changing the directions of its wheels.

There’s a cargo bin on the rear (which has an optional cupholder) that can carry up to 4.4 pounds. Inside is a USB-C port so you can charge your phone. Astro itself has a Roomba-like dock and takes less than an hour to charge from zero to full.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Not surprisingly, there are a whole bunch of sensors on board. That includes proximity sensors built into its base and a pair of cameras, including a five-megapixel RGB built into the bezel of its face/screen. The other is decidedly more surprising, popping out the top of its head. This 12-megapixel RGB/IR camera sticks up for livestreaming purposes. Its retractable base can extend as tall as four feet, to serve as a kind of periscope for the robot to get a better look.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Having spent around an hour with the robot and its creators, I have to say I’m pretty impressed with what the team has built here. Of course, the question of how many people are interested in owning the thing is a different one entirely. The company says it has tested Astro in “thousands” of homes to work out some of the kinks — like getting stuck in the occasional corner. The Day One program is less a public beta than a method for gauging customer interest in the product.

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“I think this is the first of the robot series that we’re doing. This is an invite-only program — we want to make sure that people that get Astro can have a great experience with it, given the challenge of homes and different spaces,” says Tritschler. “As we think long term, as we think of consumer robotics, of course we want to have all different kinds of price ranges and capabilities, and have a more directed mainstream product as part of that. But we think Astro is a good place to start to reaffirm all of the work we’ve done to create value from day one and ensure that what we’ve done actually makes sense for the consumer. We’re going to be interested in getting that feedback when we start shipping the product later in the year.”

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Amazon Fall 2021 Hardware Event

Alexa’s new features will let users personalize the A.I. to their own needs

Amazon is preparing to roll out a trio of new features that will allow consumers to further personalize their Alexa experience by helping train the Alexa A.I. using simple tools. In a few months’ time, consumers will be able to teach Alexa to do things like identifying specific sounds in their household, such as a ringing doorbell or instant pot’s chime, for example. Or, for Ring users, the A.I. could notice when something has visually changed — like when a door that’s meant to be closed is now standing open. Plus, consumers will be able to more explicitly direct Alexa to adjust to their personal preferences around things like favorite sports teams, preferred weather app, or food preferences.

The features were introduced today at Amazon’s fall event, where the company is announcing its latest Echo devices and other new hardware.

The new sound identifying feature builds on something Alexa already offers, called Alexa Guard. This feature can identify certain sounds — like glass breaking or a fire or carbon monoxide alarm — which can be helpful for people who are away from home or for those who are hard of hearing or Deaf, as it helps them to know there is a potential emergency taking place. With an upgraded subscription, consumers can even play the sound of a barking dog when a smart camera detects motion outside.

Now, Amazon is thinking of how Alexa’s sound detection capability could be used for things that aren’t necessarily emergencies.

Image Credits: Amazon

With a new feature, consumers will be able to train Alexa to hear a certain type of sound that matters to them. This could be a crock pot’s beeping, the oven timer, a refrigerator that beeps when left open, a garage door opening, a doorbell’s ring, the sound of water running, or anything else that makes a noise that’s easy to identify because it generally sounds the same from time to time.

By providing Alexa with 6 to 10 samples, Alexa will “learn” what this noise is — a big reduction from the thousands of samples Amazon has used in the past to train Alexa about other sounds. Customers will be able teach Alexa a new custom sound directly from their Echo device or through the Alexa mobile app, Amazon says.

However, the enrollment and training process will take place in the cloud. But detection of the sound going forward will happen on the device itself, and Amazon will not send the audio to cloud after enrollment.

Once trained, users can then choose to kick off their own notifications or routines whenever Alexa hears that noise. Again, this could help from an accessibility standpoint or with elder care, as Alexa could display a doorbell notification on their Fire TV, for instance. But it could also just serve as another way to start everyday routines — like when the garage door sounds, Alexa could trigger a personalized “I’m Home” routine that turns on the lights and starts your favorite music.

Amazon says Custom Sound Event Detection will be available next year.

Along similar lines, consumers will also be able to train the A.I. in their Ring cameras to identify a region of interest in the camera feed, then determine if that area has changed. This change has to be fairly binary for now — like a shed door that’s either open or closed. It may not be able to handle something more specific where there is a lot of variation.

This functionality, called “Custom Event Alerts,” will start rolling out to Ring Spotlight Cam Battery customers in the coming months.

Finally, another Alexa feature will allow the smart assistant to learn a user’s preferences related to food, sports, or skill providers. (Skills are the third-party voice apps that run on Alexa devices.) Consumers will be able to say something like, “Alexa, learn my preferences,” to start teaching Alexa. But the learning can be done in subtler ways, too. For instance, if you ask Alexa for nearby restaurants, you could then say something like, “Alexa, some of us are vegetarian” to have steakhouses removed from the suggestions.

Meanwhile, after Alexa learns about your favorite sports teams, the A.I. will include more highlights from the teams you’ve indicated you care about when you ask for sports highlights.

And after you tell Alexa which third-party skill you’d like to use, the A.I. assistant will default to using that skill in the future instead of its own native responses.

For now, though, only third-party weather skills are supported. But Amazon wants to expand this to more skills over time. This could help to address skills’ lower usage, as people can’t remember which skills they want to launch. It would allow for a more “set it and forget it” type of customization, where you find a good skill, set it as your default, then just speak using natural language (e.g. “What’s the weather?”) without having to remember the skill by name going forward.

Amazon says that this preference data is only associated with the customer’s anonymized customer ID, and it can be adjusted. For example, if a vegetarian goes back to meat, they could say “Alexa, I’m not a vegetarian” the next time Alexa returns their restaurant suggestions. The data is not being used to customize Amazon.com shopping suggestions, the company said.

This preference teaching will be available before the end of the year.

Amazon says these features represent further steps towards its goal of bringing what it calls “ambient intelligence” to more people.

Ambient A.I., noted Rohit Prasad, SVP and head scientist for Alexa, “can learn about you and adapt to your needs, instead of you having to conform to it.”

“Alexa, to me, is not just a spoken language service. Instead, it is an ambient intelligence service that is available on many devices around you to understand the state of the environment, and even acts proactively on your behalf,” he said.

Amazon Fall 2021 Hardware Event

New Amazon Echo devices will have local voice processing, giving users more privacy

When you speak to an Amazon Echo device, so far in its history, Alexa would connect to the internet to process requests and deliver a response. Of course, this has sparked concerns among some consumers, since it might feel worrisome to have a Wi-Fi-connected smart device listening for you to say a wake word at all times. But Amazon announced at its fall event today that new Amazon Echo devices, starting with the Echo Show 10 and the latest generation Echo, will be able to process voice commands locally, rather than sending information to the cloud.

Amazon claims it’s the first company to offer this kind of privacy-first technology on smart speakers. Last year, Amazon unveiled the AZ1 Neural Edge processor, which powers current Amazon Echo devices, but its new Echo Show 15 will be powered by the AZ2 processor. Amazon said that this processor can do 22 times more TOPS (trillions of operations per second) than the previous generation.

In addition to local voice processing, the Echo Show 15 will support a new feature called visual ID. Alexa will be able to recognize individual users when they are within the frame of view. This means that it can deliver personalized content — so if you ask to see your calendar, it will know that you want to see your specific plans for the day, and not another household member’s work schedule.

Amazon said that visual ID is also built with privacy at its foundation. The feature is optional, and users must enroll to use it — all processing happens locally on the device, and users can delete their visual ID profile at any time.

Amazon Fall 2021 Hardware Event

Disney and Amazon partner on a custom voice assistant, ‘Hey, Disney!’ and Echo rollout to Walt Disney World Resort hotels

Amazon, for the first time, is making another voice assistant available on Echo devices. The company at its fall event today announced a new voice assistant, “Hey, Disney,” developed by Disney and built on top of Alexa technology. The assistant will have its own unique voice and over 1,000 custom interactions for fans to explore, many of which will include authentic character voices and original recordings from Disney’s vast library. Consumers will be able to use “Hey, Disney” at home, and in large-scale partnership, Alexa devices featuring additional “Hey, Disney” capabilities will also be installed across Disney World Resort hotels in Orlando starting next year.

At launch, “Hey, Disney” will offer a variety of experiences for Disney fans, including jokes, interactive trivia, greetings from favorite Disney characters, and access to audio environments called “soundscapes,” which are inspired by Disney films. As users play with the new features, they’ll hear from favorite characters from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and more. Meanwhile, the experience as a whole will be guided by something called the “Disney Magical Companion.”

This companion is basically Disney’s version of Alexa, as it’s a custom voice that Disney itself developed to guide users through the new experience. While the companion’s voice has not yet been revealed, we understand that Disney used a real voice actor to create the sound, and the voice will be “male-sounding.” (Mickey perhaps?)

Image Credits: Amazon/Disney

Starting next year, guests staying at Walt Disney World Resort hotels will find an Echo Show 5 in their rooms, which they can use to access the “Hey, Disney” experience. In this case, the assistant can answer the more specific questions a visitor may have, like what time the park opens, the fastest route to the park, or where to get a meal. Or they can use the assistant to make specific guest service requests — like ordering extra towels or food from room service. Favorite Disney characters will also be able to play personalized messages for the guests throughout the day.

Amazon worked with Disney on the new voice assistant, following the launch of the Alexa Custom Assistant technology announced earlier this year. This solution allows device makers and service providers to create their own intelligent assistants tailored to their brand’s personality and customer needs. While automaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles was the first Alexa Custom Assistant customer, Disney’s is the first assistant that runs directly on Amazon’s own Echo devices. This solution is what allowed Disney to give its assistant its own wake word (“Hey, Disney”), distinct voice, and personality. It also connects customers to an exclusive library of interactions, most of which are only available after you first launch “Hey, Disney.”

Image Credits: Amazon/Disney

There may be a few interactions that can be handed off from one assistant to another, Amazon notes. For instance, if someone tries to silence an alarm by saying “Hey, Disney, stop the alarm,” the Echo may respond appropriately — even though alarms are generally an Alexa function. However, beyond a few simple use cases, most of the Disney interactions will need to be directed by Disney’s own assistant.

The partnership on the Alexa deployment is also another major aspect of this new agreement between the two companies.

Amazon had announced its Alexa for Hospitality platform back in 2018, which has been adopted by Marriott as well as LEGOLAND Parks. But Disney’s agreement represents a huge step forward for Alexa for Hospitality, as it encompasses thousands of rooms across the Walt Disney World Resort hotels in Orlando.

Amazon told us the “Hey Disney” experience offered in the resorts will differ from the home experience, as guests will not be able to log into their personal Amazon accounts and Amazon doesn’t save the audio recordings for the in-room interactions. The in-home version of “Hey, Disney,” however, will adhere to the guidelines for other child-directed experiences running on Alexa. That means parental consent must first be granted, and customers can view and manage their voice recordings using the existing privacy dashboards and interfaces.

Related to this, Amazon also launched a new Disney stand for its new Echo Show 5 smart screen.

Amazon Disney Echo stand

Amazon Fall 2021 Hardware Event

Amazon’s newest Echo Show is a 15-inch, wall-mounted digital picture frame

Amazon just took the wraps off the latest — and largest — addition to the Echo Show family. The Echo Show 15 takes the company’s smart screen technology to the wall in the form of a 15.6-inch 1080p display that doubles as a massive digital picture frame.

The $250 device is certainly a novel approach to the growing line that presently includes the Echo Show 5, Echo Show 8 and the Echo Show 10 (also priced at $250), which raised some eyebrows with a rotating screen that follows its subject around the room. The new device ups that particular ante with the addition of Visual ID, which utilizes facial recognition to identity a subject and offer them custom-tailored content.

Image Credits: Amazon

The experience is built around a customizable home screen designed to serve as kind of a control panel for the Alexa home ecosystem. This is largely accomplished through customizable widgets, which let you add things like calendar events, to-do lists and recipes — effectively serving as a kind of digital whiteboard or collection of refrigerator magnets. The list also includes smart home controls, including feeds from security cameras and digital doorbells, which are housed as a single widget.

One thing the Echo Show 15 has in spades is a whole lot of real estate. That means you can get a whole bunch of different information at once, though a tiling effect or the use of picture in picture, when your in a specific service and, say, a video doorbell alert pops up. Really, it’s the dream of something like the cover of Samsung’s smart refrigerators, without having to having to shell out a few thousand bucks for an appliance with some cameras built-in.

Beyond that, the device can do pretty much anything you’d expect from an Echo Show at this point, essentially working as a big kitchen TV. That includes streaming Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu and Sling TV. That last one is coming soon, along with content from TikTok, which you can now watch on a 15.6-inch screen, if that’s your thing. You also can cast content from a handset onto the device.

Image Credits: Amazon

The 1080p screen is coupled with side-firing speakers. Those will probably do the trick for short clips, but you’re probably going to want to connect to another Echo or Bluetooth speaker if you intend to stream music or watch movies or TV for any length of time.

There’s a camera on-board, built into the sizable bezel — or the “mat,” if we’re keeping up with the picture frame terms here. I do appreciate the use of a white border in this case, which highlights the presence of five-megapixel camera in the upper corner. The presence of a virtually hidden camera can, no doubt, prompt further privacy questions, but at least here it’s a visible black circle on a white background, next to a flashing 15.6-inch screen.

Image Credits: Amazon

The device can be used to video chat, which could ultimately make the product an interesting proposition as Amazon pushing its Alexa for Business offering as a method for incorporating more of its hardware into work settings. I could see a product like this serving as a (relatively) low cost teleconferencing device for companies with a tight budget and numerous conference rooms. When not in use, it could give you the weather and corporate events or room bookings on the calendar. Will be interesting to see if Amazon goes more aggressively after IT departments here.

There’s a physical shutter button on board to cover the camera — but anecdotally, I’d say that if I was staying at an Airbnb with one of these installed, I would be the guy who unplugs the thing and turns it to face the wall. Of course, I was also the guy who was supremely weirded out by the Echo Show 10’s face pivot feature, so take that as you will. When Amazon announced the feature last year, they were quick to note that it wasn’t using specific facial details for the tracking.

Image Credits: Amazon

Amazon is quick to note here that Visual ID requires the user to opt-in and enroll their face. Users can delete their profile on-device or via the Alexa app if they have second thoughts. I anticipate the feature will become ubiquitous across the company’s various Show products with built-in cameras. The display is powered by Amazon’s newly announced quad-core AZ2 chip with an on-board neural processor — the successor to last year’s AZ1. The custom-built chip is designed to do much of the processing on-board, which means it won’t send Visual ID data to the cloud. Given Amazon’s long track record with face recognition, however, the feature will still, no doubt, raise concerns among privacy advocates.

The Show 15 sports an update to the Sound Detection feature that rolled out in beta earlier this year. At launch, the offering was designed to detect specific noises, such as broken glass or crying baby, at which point it sends an alert to the account holder. A new addition called Custom Sounds, meanwhile, can effectively train the system for alerts by asking the device to listen.

Image Credits: Amazon

The Echo Show 15 runs $250 and will be available later this year. I can’t speak to build quality here, having not actually seen the product up close, but for the pricing, one would hope for something more than just a scaled up digital photo frame — especially given the fact that it’s designed to hang on a while or sit on a counter or table all the time. It’s effectively the antithesis of early smart speakers, which were more or less designed to fade into the background. Countertop stands and cabinet mounts will be available as well, but sold separately.

Amazon Fall 2021 Hardware Event

Amazon is reportedly planning a wall-mounted Echo with a 15-inch display

Amazon is working on a number of new devices including an Echo with a 15-inch wall-mounted display, a soundbar, new Echo Auto technology and wearables. Some may appear fairly soon at the company’s September 28th hardware event, according to a Bloomberg report.

The splashiest-looking product would be an Alexa-enabled Echo with a display size around 15-inches. Codenamed Hoya, it could not only be placed on a stand like a regular Echo device, but mounted on a wall as well. It would serve as a smart-home center to control lights, cameras, locks and other devices, while showing weather, timers, appointments, photos and more. It’s specifically designed to work in the kitchen, displaying recipes and YouTube cooking videos, while letting you stream Netflix and other apps.

The company may also announce its own soundbar, codenamed Harmony, to accompany a rumored lineup of Amazon-branded TVs. Unlike third-party Alexa-enabled soundbars, it would have a front-facing camera and support video calls from TVs, much like Facebook’s Portal TV.

Finally, it’s reportedly developing a new version of Echo Auto (codenamed Marion). The updated version will supposedly have a new design and allow for device charging via inductive technology. Amazon currently has a partnership with Ford to put Alexa in 700,000 vehicles, but it’s apparently looking to team up with other automakers, too.

Other items in the works include new Echo speakers for 2022 and wearables for kids and seniors (the latter with fall detection). It’s also reportedly building dedicated processors to improve artificial intelligence along with new technology to help its Fire TV, Echo and other devices work better together.

The company has some other, somewhat more unusual products in the works as well, according to the report. It has been working on a home robot codenamed Vesta that would use the Alexa interface and also an Alexa-powered karaoke microphone — though team working on that project was reportedly disbanded.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.