Alexa To Come To Low-Spec Machines Such As Thermostats And Light Switches

The Alexa voice assistant by Amazon has jumped to a number of machines lately, comprising ear buds, eyeglasses, and microwave ovens. Now, the firm has disclosed that it will operate on machines with as less as 1 MB of memory and an affordable Cortex-M chipset. That indicates you can hope to see Alexa on all types of comparatively dumb machines from toys to light bulbs.

Up till now, Alexa needed an ARM Cortex-A chipset and minimum 100 MB of RAM. That restricted it smart machines that acted as a central place for other things that are managed by Alexa.

“We now offload to the cloud the huge majority of all of this,” Dirk Didascalou, AWS IoT VP, claimed to the media. “The only thing that the machine still requires to do is detection of wake word.” That means firms will be capable of reducing material prices by as much as 50% with the help of lower-powered processors from Qualcomm, NXP, and others, he claimed.

Amazon did not tell yet which machines may employ this, but it can mean that you will just require yelling at your bulb if you are out of voice range of a specific device. “Now you do not require identifying where is your hub—you just talk to your surrounding and your surrounding can communicate with you,” claimed Didascalou.

On a related note, one of users’ favorite smart speakers over the last couple of years has been Echo Dot. It is easy to use, small, and incredibly cheap at just $50. Certainly, there are devices providing enhanced audio, but if all you needed was an affordable way to get Alexa into the house, the Echo Dot was the choice. That is, until previously this year, when Amazon declared a completely new device: the Echo Flex. For $25, it is one of the most affordable Alexa machines in the market.