We are excited to announce a new addition to the Alexa family—Nucleus.

Nucleus is an Alexa-enabled connected home intercom system designed to bring families closer together by giving people the ability to make room-to-room, home-to-home and mobile-to-home calls. The average family today is spread across geographies and constantly caught up in daily responsibilities. Nucleus aims to redefine family communication by making it instantaneous. Now you can quickly video chat with grandma on her Nucleus from your smartphone as you’re leaving the office, or never miss family dinner when you’re traveling away from home. 

The Alexa integration on Nucleus makes it easy to check the latest weather report or add items to your shopping list from anywhere in the house. You can talk to Alexa hands-free through Nucleus using the “Alexa” wake word or tap-to-talk using the button on the screen. Simply say, “Alexa, play Adele” or “Alexa, add milk to my list.” You also have access to a growing number of Alexa skills, built by developers using the Alexa Skills Kit, including smart home controls through SmartThings, Insteon and Wink.

You can purchase Nucleus on Amazon.com.

Getting Started with AVS

Developing the next breakthrough consumer tech product? Learn how AVS can help you add rich and intuitive Alexa-enabled experiences to your connected devices, services or applications.

When Sébastien de la Bastie, Managing Director at Invoxia, walked the exposition floor at CES 2015, he knew his company had a hit on its hands. That’s when the French technology start-up previewed Triby—a new smart speaker for the kitchen.

Triby is a portable yet connected device for your smart home. Triby’s integration of AVS gives it voice control over a growing world of digital devices and services. It’s an incredible wireless music system for Spotify, FM and internet radio, and Bluetooth streaming. And it’s also a family’s home communications hub. Triby provides a connected message board, free internet calls and conference-quality, hands-free mobile calls. It also has an e-paper screen to display digital sticky notes and other information.

Paul Bernard, Director, Corporate Development and Head of the Alexa Fund, also saw the CES demo and was impressed with Invoxia’s vision for reinventing home communications with the Triby. He saw the device  as an ideal candidate for Alexa Voice Service (AVS) integration. Soon afterward, Amazon approached de la Bastie about adding new capabilities to his device.

With AVS, Triby would have access to the world of voice-enabled services offered by Amazon. “Amazon had the idea of making Alexa available on non-Amazon devices,” said de la Bastie. They spotted us because we had developed innovative technology for far-field voice capture. That’s important for any device sending acoustic data to Alexa.”

In late 2015, Amazon’s Alexa Fund made Invoxia its first AVS-related investment, showing its support for the company’s vision of bringing voice to Triby. Thus began a strong, collaborative partnership to create the first non-Amazon, Alexa-enabled device. The new Triby debuted in April 2016.

de la Bastie says he recalls the project involved three distinct phases.

Last week Pebble announced that they are integrating Alexa Voice Services (AVS) to Pebble Core, a new category of 3G-capable ultra-wearable device that lets you take music, weather, and more on your run. Unlike other Pebble devices, the Pebble Core is not a smartwatch. Instead, it’s a tiny standalone wearable device that’s designed to allow people to listen to music (via Spotify), runners to track runs, and more – all without a smartphone. With over 1,000+ Alexa skills built by developers using the Alexa Skills Kit, Pebble Core can tap into any number of capabilities. Watch the video to see it in action.

Since the Pebble Core has its own 3G connectivity, connecting to Alexa does not require a smartphone and interacting with Alexa is simple. Just use a pair of wired or Bluetooth headphones with a built-in mic and say something like, “Alexa, what’s on my calendar today?” Whether you want to get your news briefing while you’re running on the treadmill, or check the weather before going out for a run, the AVS integration with Pebble Core makes it easy to just ask.

Last year, we introduced a Developer Preview of Alexa Voice Service (AVS) to hobbyists and device makers to help them integrate Alexa into their connected devices and apps, and then a few weeks back, we released an implementation of an Alexa enabled Raspberry Pi on GitHub. We couldn’t be happier with the response we received from the developer community.

Meet Triby – a new connected family-friendly kitchen device that magnetically sticks to the fridge and can play music, make calls, display messages, and is voice activated.

Built by Invoxia, Triby is one of the first ‘Alexa-enabled’ devices built with AVS, which means that you can do almost everything with Alexa on Triby that you can do with Alexa on Echo. 

You address Alexa through Triby using the “Alexa” wake word, just as you would on Echo. Simply say “Alexa, play Adele” and Triby can play Adele from Prime Music, “Alexa add milk to my list” and Triby will add it to your shopping list, or “Alexa, turn off the kitchen lights” and Triby becomes a way to access and control the smart home.

“Voice recognition capabilities transform the way we interact with music, content and services. Amazon made it available to the world with its first range of Alexa-enabled devices. Now with a diversified Alexa-enabled device offering, more people can enjoy the Alexa experience. We are excited to be at the forefront of many third party devices to integrate the Alexa Voice Service with Triby. It has great communication features, the ability to hear you from across the room while being portable and an always-on display. We can't wait to equip millions of kitchens with it!" says Sebastien de le Bastie, Invoxia’s Managing Director.

Learn More about Alexa on Triby.

If you are a device maker, service provider or application developer interested adding rich and intuitive experiences to your products – AVS is the right choice for you! Get Started

Ready to Get Started?

For more information on Alexa-enabled devices and getting started with Alexa, check out the following resources:

Have Questions? We are here to help! Visit us on the AVS Forum to discuss specific questions with one of our experts.

- @amit

We are very excited to introduce you to CoWatch - the world’s first ‘Alexa-enabled’ smartwatch built using the Alexa Voice Service API. Boasting a modern watch design, and a high-res touch screen, CoWatch is a companion smartwatch device with built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and is the first wearable/smartwatch built on top of the Cronologics OS platform.

We are excited to announce an important update to the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) that will enable you to enhance the user experience on your Alexa-enabled products.

Alexa Voice Service (AVS) is an intelligent and scalable cloud service that adds voice-enabled experiences to any connected product – all you need is a microphone and speaker. Users can simply talk to their Alexa-enabled products to play music, answer questions, get news/local information, control smart home products, and more. And with the free Amazon Alexa app, users can easily control and manage their products from anywhere!

Last year, we launched a developer preview of AVS to introduce you to the benefits of voice-powered experiences. With this update, we are making architectural improvements that include updated APIs and message structures, Amazon Alexa App (iOS and Android) support and the ability to send server-initiated messages.

The free Alexa Voice Service (AVS), the same service that powers Amazon Echo, is now available in developer preview to hobbyists and hardware makers who want to integrate Alexa into their connected devices. AVS enables your customers to speak to Alexa through the microphone on your device and Alexa will respond through the device’s speakers. With the developer preview, you get access to a collection of self-service tools, documentation, and APIs and code samples to enhance your device and delight your customers with new voice experiences. Alexa includes access to information, music, audiobooks, news, weather, traffic and more, including any custom skills you create using the Alexa Skills Kit to differentiate your device. Learn more about the developer preview.