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I would love to use such a device, and explore the possibilities. However, it concerns me that every major player out there tries to create a locked playing fi

I would love to use such a device, and explore the possibilities. However, it concerns me that every major player out there tries to create a locked playing field with their devices ("amazon home" vs "google home"). I really don't like the idea of buying home automation devices that are meant for one specific solution. Moreover, I also fear that I could become dependent on a corporate-owned device/service, with no direct alternatives (or with convoluted migration paths). And that's not even mentioning the privacy issues, or (ok, I touched that a bit) the freedom to hack a bit the API (what if I would like to add a completely custom command, change the detection keyword, etc...) There are some open solutions such as Mycroft, but I must confess I haven't looked much at it. I won't consider this technology mature or ready for use until those concerns are addressed, which could take some time: it also seems to me that those "personal assistants" are more suited to a central architecture (which raises the question: did this architecture influence their design, or is it the only possible solution for a reliable "personal assistant"?).

manyxcxi 9y ago
With regards to locking in to home automation, Alexa has many integrations with the major home automation brands and hardware. For instance, my house is nearly all Z-Wave and I use a Wink Hub to tie them together. It took possibly 30 seconds to integrate Wink to Alexa and now I can control my entire house through voice commands such as "turn downstairs off" or "turn master bedroom on". Even though I have iPhone and many HomeKit enabled devices, the fact that Wink and Alexa support so many integrations keeps me from even attempting to buy into a very locked in ecosystem like Apple or Google are attempting. Finally, in the absence of a pre-existing integration, you can always write your own, which can't really be said for any of the other major players that aren't completely roll your own. I've been pleasantly surprised by the flexibility the Alexa platform has shown, and it's becoming increasingly part of our home workflow because of how well it plays with other things.

manyxcxi 9y ago

With regards to locking in to home automation, Alexa has many integrations with the major home automation brands and hardware. For instance, my house is nearly all Z-Wave and I use a Wink Hub to tie them together. It took possibly 30 seconds to integrate Wink to Alexa and now I can control my entire house through voice commands such as "turn downstairs off" or "turn master bedroom on". Even though I have iPhone and many HomeKit enabled devices, the fact that Wink and Alexa support so many integrations keeps me from even attempting to buy into a very locked in ecosystem like Apple or Google are attempting. Finally, in the absence of a pre-existing integration, you can always write your own, which can't really be said for any of the other major players that aren't completely roll your own. I've been pleasantly surprised by the flexibility the Alexa platform has shown, and it's becoming increasingly part of our home workflow because of how well it plays with other things.