Echo Hub: A Smart Home Controller with Interactive Widths and Control Panels for Activating a Smart Home with a Wireless Sensor

He says that it’s for customers that want to do more but find the smart home too intimidating or expensive, and that is where Crestron or Control4 come in. Many people will find the Echo Hub an addition because of the price point.

The widgets are interactive; you can tap on them to turn off a light, adjust a thermostat temperature, etc. And that’s one tap, not two or three, making this usable as a smart home controller. You don’t need to wake it up to get to the controls, they should show up as you approach.

Available to preorder soon and shipping later this year, the Echo Hub will come with a wall-mount bracket, power adapter, and six-foot cable (USB-A to C). There are decorative frames in wood, white and metallic for $19.99 each, and a table cover that can be painted costs $29.99 on Amazon.

The widgets include icons or larger group tiles for your favorite devices, cameras, climate, locks, and security (arming or disarming a Ring security system). Along the side of the screen, there is a room panel that gives you access to other defined rooms in the house and the ability to run routines directly from the panel.

Amazon Alexa Map View for Smart Home Automation and Control: How To Get There Using Amazon’s SmartThings, Hulu, Tubi, and Prime Video

The company worked hard to bring down the time it took for a device to respond. Locally connected devices over Thread, Matter, Bluetooth, or Zigbee respond very quickly — “as fast as a light switch,” he says.

Built-in speakers and a microphone array allow for two-way audio to talk to anyone at your video doorbell or via Drop In with Echo devices. You can also use Alexa voice control, listen to audio, or watch video. Prime Video, Hulu, and Tubi will be supported by Limp at launch.

Limp says Amazon designed this device for its “best customer,” those with 20 or more connected smart home devices who perhaps find it all a bit too much to manage scrolling through endless device lists in the Alexa app.

I recently reviewed the Brilliant smart home control panel, which has a similar function as this (again without the hub features) but at a much higher price point ($400). These devices are expensive and that’s not wrong. In the pro-installation smart home range, they are easily in the thousands of dollars.

Map View lets you create a digital version of your home’s floor plan and control it through a map interface that enables you to pin connected devices to each room, just by touching them.

“It’s super fun,” says Limp. “If I want to change the thermostat, I just tap on it, and the controls just pop up. If I want to zoom into the upper floor and turn on a bedroom light, I can just tap and get the controls to dim it or do whatever. It is a new paradigm and it is really interesting.

Amazon isn’t the first to do this — Samsung has a map interface for its SmartThings platform available on its smart monitors and 2022 TVs and newer, and the approach clearly makes a lot of sense. It means that you don’t need to remember the exact name of the light, which is located to the right of the sofa.

The Alexa Map View will be available in the US later this year through the Alexa app — but only on compatible lidar-equipped iOS devices (Pro and Max models from the iPhone 12 and newer) at launch. It is due to come to the Echo Hub early next year.

Room Adaptive Technology in the Echo Show 8: A Testroom at Amazon’s New Hybrid Hall HQ2 in Arlington, Va

I didn’t get the chance to try out this shift from ambient mode to thewidget on the nearby echo show 8 because there were too many people around, but I did try out the adaptive content feature that can show different content at the same time.

While it’s clearly designed to be wall-mounted, using it on a tabletop feels like a good alternative, although you have to pay $29.99 for a Sanus stand (the same company that makes the Show 15 accessories).

The third-gen Echo Show 8 ($149.99) also has Amazon’s latest AZ2 processor, which makes it 40 percent faster, Amazon’s Dave Limp said at the fall hardware event this week. It felt quite different when I was in the demo room at Amazon’s new HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia.

New look of the smart display with edge-to- edge glass and a more sidious rear speaker promises better audio Heather Zorn, VP ofAlexa, told me that they are getting spatial audio processing technology to boost its music capabilities and will be a lot like the echo studio.

New room adaption tech also “senses the acoustics of the room and fine-tunes playback for optimal sound,” according to Amazon’s blog post. However, we were not able to conduct a test in the demo room.

The current version of the camera is still 13MP, but has been relocated to the middle in order to be better for zoom calls and a smart display. The camera also enables a neat new feature called Adaptive Content, which changes how it displays content based on how close you are. This should make it a better glanceable display and more effective as a touch screen, as it presents a more touch-friendly UI as you get up close.

There are new quick-access buttons on the homescreen. They’re like mini versions of the Echo Show 15’s widgets, bringing up the weather and other info with one tap. There was a bit of a resemblance to the apps on the iPad screen in theWidgets, but they were not fully designed for the display yet.