LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SPECIAL TO CES — Today at CES 2016, Vivint Smart Home™, a leading provider of smart home technology, announced it is working with Amazon to connect its Vivint Sky smart home platform with Amazon Echo. Marking the first time the voice-enabled device will work with a managed smart home system, this relationship allows Vivint customers to use their voice to control their smart home.
Vivint customers can talk to Alexa, the cloud-based voice service that powers Amazon Echo, using the Vivint skill and their home will respond with context-aware actions. For example, simply saying “Alexa, tell Vivint I’m going to bed” can turn off the lights, lock the doors, arm the security system and turn down the thermostat.
“We’re excited to work with Vivint to bring Amazon Echo and the magic of far-field voice control to more customers,” said Charlie Kindel, Director, Amazon Echo and Alexa. “People have been dreaming of being able to say things to their house and have it obey for decades. Now that’s possible with Echo—just ask Alexa to turn up the heat, lock the doors, and more.”
Customers can connect Amazon Echo to their Vivint smart home in three easy steps using the Amazon Alexa app. From inside the home, users now have the option to control their smart home using their voice with Amazon Echo, or to use the Vivint SkyControl panel or Vivint mobile app.
Using Amazon Echo, customers can control the following smart home experiences using the Vivint skill:
- Smart door locks – Through Alexa, customers can find out whether doors are locked and can ask Alexa to lock them.
- Smart security – Customers can ask Alexa whether the security system is enabled and arm the system to “stay” or “away” mode.
- Smart thermostat – Vivint customers can ask Alexa to adjust the temperature through set point changes or by turning the fan on or off.
- Lighting control – Customers can ask Alexa to dim lights or to turn them on or off.
- Garage door – Customers can ask Alexa whether the garage door is open and ask that it be closed.
“We believe voice control is the future of the smart home, and Vivint is pleased to integrate with the best far-field voice solution on the market,” said Matt Eyring, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivint. “We look forward to working closely with Amazon to further advance Echo’s capabilities and bring true intelligence to the smart home.”
To see Amazon Echo in action with a Vivint Smart Home at CES 2016, visit booth 71342 of the Sands Expo.
To learn more about a Vivint Smart Home, visit www.vivint.com.
About Amazon Echo
Echo is designed around your voice and is hands-free and always ready—ask it for information, music, news, weather and more from across the room and get results or answers instantly. Alexa is the brain behind Amazon Echo—since Alexa is built in the cloud and leverages AWS, it is always getting smarter and adding more functionality. Echo uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud, where it leverages the power of Amazon Web Services to recognize and respond to your request.
Echo uses far-field voice recognition with an array of seven microphones to clearly hear you around the room. Advanced beam-forming technology combines the signals from the individual microphones to suppress noise, reverberation, and even competing speech. This audio signal is then used by our deep neural networks based speech recognition system trained on a large amount of far-field speech data to recognize your utterance from a distance. Enhanced noise cancellation allows you to wake up the device even when it is playing loud music.
Echo has been fine-tuned to deliver crisp vocals with dynamic bass response. Its dual downward-firing speakers produce 360° omni-directional audio to fill the room with immersive sound. Plus, in addition to streaming music from the cloud, Echo is Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream other popular music services your phone or tablet.
About Vivint Smart Home
Vivint Smart Home is a leading provider of smart home technology. Vivint delivers services through a cloud-based platform that integrates a wide range of wireless features and components to provide simple, affordable home security, energy management and home automation. Dedicated to redefining the home experience with intelligent products and services, Vivint serves more than one million customers throughout the U.S. and Canada. For more information, visit www.vivint.com.
