Soon you will be able to map your home with Alexa, but under a couple of conditions
The app Alexa is the center of smart home management of Amazon, from which you can activate light bulbs, thermostats or Echo speaker, but maybe you don’t immediately remember what the device what you are looking for in a list of names perhaps not very descriptive (do you know how to create an Alexa skill?).
That’s why the new feature MapView of the app is an innovation that is nothing short of epochal, as it allows you to carry out a scan of your home for map it and identify all at a glance appliances that you want to control (read also: how to connect Alexa to devices).
Source: Amazon
Announced last September along with new voice assistant features and new Echo HubMap View has been available since yesterday public previewwhich you can access if you live in the United States and you own a Apple device compatible (equipped with LiDAR camera).
To use the feature, users must go to the service page on Amazon.com and click Email me when released (You must have an Amazon.com account, and preview is currently closed.)
Afterwards, you will receive it away e-mail access and you will be able to use it. Upon startup, you will need to scan your home using the sensor LiDAR of the last iPhone Pro or iPad Pro (therefore it is only compatible with iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, 13 Pro and Pro Max, 14 Pro and Pro Max, 15 Pro and Pro Max and 4th, 5th and 6th generation iPad Pro devices, 2020 or newer).
There scan it should be pretty simple, and the company says it should take approx a minute per room e a minute for 10 devices to set the initial map, but it depends on the shape of your home.
Source: Amazon
In any case, you will not have to scan the whole apartmentand you can choose which devices include, as Alexa does not import all devices.
Once scanned, you can access the map at any device iOS and you can add and remove devices at will.
With MapViewyou can check quickly access your smart home from one place, such as seeing which Echo is playing music, setting the temperature, seeing if lights are on or off, locking locks. All from one map, as he explained Charlie FrenchAmazon’s director of smart home, in an interview before the launch.
The company ensures that the map of the house is encrypted And archived securely in the Amazon cloud, while the live images of the house that are captured on the iPhone to create the map are processed locally on your device and not stored.
The interface will launch in the Alexa mobile app in early 2024 in the US, then arrive on the new smart home controller Echo Hub, which is expected to launch later this year. There is no timing information yet on a global release.
