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Connected Devices - What's New

Get the latest updates on new Alexa smart home features, developer spotlights, events, and more.

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Featured News    |    Case Studies    |    Feature Updates

Featured News

Introducing Multi-Capability Skills

Introducing Multi-Capability Skills: Expand Your Device Experience by Combining Smart Home and Custom Skill Models into a Single Skill.

Expand Self-Service Prototyping for ACK

Get Your Alexa-Connected Devices to Market Even Faster with Expanded Self-Service Prototyping Using Alexa Connect Kit.

Introducing Amazon Common Software

Introducing Amazon Common Software for Devices (Preview): Accelerate Your Adoption of Amazon Device SDKs.

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Case Studies

Arlo Voice-Enables its Smart Cameras

By integrating with Alexa, Arlo could enable its customers to access any video feed by voice—even when their hands are full.

Wyze Labs: Smart Cameras

Works with Alexa helped Wyze Labs grow sales even faster by expanding both their online and offline footprint, while delivering a great experience to their customers.

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Feature Updates

Date Name Summary Availability Links
9/24/2020 Alexa Hunches Enable Alexa to proactively act on hunches without customers needing to ask US

Alexa Blog

Sign Up Form

9/24/2020 Energy Dashboard
Help your customers track, manage, and save energy usage for your compatible Alexa-connected devices US

Alexa Blog

Sign Up Form

9/24/2020 Inventory Usage Sensors
Expand convenient reordering through Alexa to more devices with new usage sensors All

Alexa Blog

Sign Up Form

9/24/2020 App Live View
Enable live viewing of your camera and doorbell camera streams in the Alexa app All

Alexa Blog

Sign Up Form

9/24/2020 Bluetooth Mesh
Connect your light bulb devices to Alexa using Bluetooth BLE Mesh US Sign Up Form
9/24/2020 Local Smart Home Skills
Enable faster and offline control of your devices with local skills US Sign Up Form
9/24/2020 Bluetooth Simple Setup
Enable Frustration-Free Setup for Bluetooth devices All

Alexa Blog

Documentation

9/24/2020 Wi-Fi Simple Reconnect
Enable your devices to automatically reconnect to a customer’s network if they lose connection All

Alexa Blog

Sign Up Form

7/22/2020 Alexa Connect Kit Module with Espressif Chipset Introducing added support for a new Alexa Connect Kit (ACK) Module with Espressif chipset, as much as 50% lower in cost. US
Blog
Preview Form
6/30/2020 Smart Home Tests Tool Reduce the time and cost to certify your device by quickly testing that your smart home skill is correctly handling Alexa directives for the capabilities it supports.  All Documentation
5/28/2020 Multi-Capability Skills Expand Your Device Experience by Combining Smart Home and Custom Skill Models into a Single Skill US Alexa Blog
Documentation
3/25/2020 Amazon Common Software (ACS) for Devices (Preview) Accelerate Your Adoption of Amazon Device SDKs All Alexa Blog
Documentation
3/13/2020 Expanded Self-Service Prototyping with Alexa Connect Kit Use the Alexa Connect Kit self-service prototyping tools to create a virtual product, define its Alexa capabilities, and test your device's customer experience with Alexa. US Blog
Documentation
2/3/2020 Change Report Accuracy Rate Metric Use the new metric to monitor the accuracy of your ChangeReport events sent to Alexa in the Analytics page of the developer console, helping you test and confirm your device events are reporting correctly. All Documentation
2/3/2020 Smart Home Live Debugger Tool Test that Alexa is accurately receiving your proactive events when a user adds a new endpoint or updates an existing endpoint, and when a user removes an endpoint from their account. All Documentation

 

Feature updates are categorized into the following types of releases:

  • Preview: This feature is not immediately available for all developers. Developers are required to sign up and agree to the terms of the release to use.
  • Beta: This feature may lack important functionality and may have future breaking changes, but is operational and available to all developers.
  • Generally Available: This feature is immediately available for all developers in all commercial regions (unless otherwise noted), and developers can use it to run production workloads.This feature is immediately available for all developers in all commercial regions (unless otherwise noted), and developers can use it to run production workloads.

 

Locale Availability

Use this table to understand which skills a feature is available for.

Features Available In... Can Be Used for Skills That...
All Use any supported language model and are published in any supported locale
All English language locales Use the English (AU), English (CA), English (IN), English (UK), and/or English (US) language model and are published in the corresponding supported locale(s)
US Use the English (US) language model and are published in the United States (US)
es-US Use the Spanish (US) language model and are published in the United States (US)
AU Use the English (AU) language model and are published in Australia (AU) and New Zealand (NZ)
BR Use the Portuguese (BR) language model and are published in Brazil (BR)
CA Use the English (CA) or French (CA) language model and are published in Canada (CA)
DE Use the German (DE) language model and are published in Germany (DE) and Austria (AT)
ES Use the Spanish (ES) language model and are published in Spain (ES)
FR Use the French (FR) language model and are published in France (FR)
IN Use the English (IN) language model and are published in India (IN)
hi-IN Use the Hindi (IN) language model and are published in India (IN)
IT Use the Italian (IT) language model and are published in Italy (IT)
JP Use the Japanese (JP) language model and are published in Japan (JP)
MX Use the Spanish (MX) language model and are published in Mexico (MX)
UK Use the English (UK) language model and are published in the UK (UK) and Ireland (IE)



Ready to Build?

You can create, manage, test, and certify your Alexa-connected devices using our developer consoles.