“Alexa, set the temperature to 72 downstairs.”
- The physical device, Amazon Echo Dot
- Incredibly cheap price point (I paid $40)
- Facilitated by two things
- Advanced, miniaturized electronics available at scale / cost due to smartphone revolution
- Amazon’s success and business model in ecommerce
- Sound capture from 7 microphones
- Far-field audio capture due to advanced algorithm
- Beam forming
- Noise reduction
- Acoustic echo cancellation
- Facilitated by two things
(from https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service/dev-kits/amazon-7-mic)
- Voice data is compressed and sent over the network (wi-fi router to cable / ethernet modem)
- Processed in the Amazon S3 Cloud
- Algorithms process the audio
- Realize this is looking for a smart thermostat
- The physical device, Nest.
- Not an uncomplicated product just as a thermostat
- Simple, aesthetically pleasing design
- Tony Faddell (father of iPod—guy sure likes round interfaces)
- Functionality with wide array of legacy technology (mid-90s furnace in my house)
- Again, smartphone hardware revolution facilitated this (LCD display, SOC, etc.)
- Was a startup bought by Google for $2B
- Simple, aesthetically pleasing design
- Uses motion sensors to detect when house is occupied / active
- Smart features like automatic schedules, auto-away, and more
- Big data generated from anonymized usage allows for better learning (how to set schedules, how to more efficiently operate (particular equipment, climates, etc.)
- Configured via smartphone app
- Not an uncomplicated product just as a thermostat
- Nest connected as Skill (Amazon Echo version of app) using an API (application programming interface)
- Echo uses text to speech to tell me the temperature is now set where I want it
- LCD illuminates