Now Available: Physical Pan and Tilt capabilities for 3P cameras on Echo Show and Alexa App

Customers love connecting their cameras to Alexa and using Alexa features that give them greater security and peace of mind whether they are home or away. Last year, we brought the ability to physically pan 1P cameras, such as Echo Show 10 (Gen 3) via the Alexa app. Today, we are excited to announce the ability to physically pan and tilt (pPT) 3P cameras capable of physical motion, remotely, while seeing their live video feed on the Alexa app or Echo Show devices. With these features, your customers will be able to use simple touch gestures such as swipe left and right, or up and down, to extend the field of view of these cameras. These gestures can be extended to control the movement of non-stationary cameras, such as for moving the camera forward and backwards, left and right, or from one viewing area to another. This gives your customers the added flexibility, safety, and security of monitoring their homes through touch interactions on Echo Show or from anywhere where they can access the Alexa app.

To enable customers to use the physical pan and tilt features, your device must implement the Alexa.RangeController Interface. The RangeController interface utilizes the data channel created between the camera and Alexa cloud to send the pan and tilt commands to the camera. You also need to implement Alexa.RTCSessionController Interface as a prerequisite for WebRTC streaming. These features are available on all Echo Show devices and on the Android and iOS platforms for the Alexa app for customers in the US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, UK, Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Netherlands, Japan, India, and Australia.

Brands like Wyze are already evaluating the use of these features for their customers. To enable physical pan and tilt for your cameras, you will need to specify the instances that your camera supports, such as Camera.Pan and/or Camera.Tilt, in Alexa.RangeController, and the minimum and maximum ranges for each of these instances as the percentage of the Field of View of your camera. These properties must be sent in Alexa.DiscoveryResponse. Once the RTC data channel is established, the pan and tilt directives and responses can be sent on it for the relevant actions to happen.

To find out more on how to implement the physical pan and tilt APIs for your cameras, visit documentation here. Provide your customers more control over their live video streams anytime, anywhere, starting today.