Echo smart speakers can soon control your smart lights automatically

Fourth- and fifth-gen Echo Dots will soon be able to automatically adjust your lights for you using their built-in ambient light sensor and ultrasound motion detection. | Image: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Amazon Echo smart speakers are getting a new feature soon: automatic lighting. Smart lighting is one of the most popular use cases in the smart home, but it can be fiddly to set up and frustrating to control. With this new capability, Amazon is looking to make it as easy as just buying and screwing in a lightbulb.

Later this year, with any compatible Echo or motion and ambient light sensor, Alexa will be able to automatically detect both brightness levels and activity in a room and intelligently decide whether to turn the lights on or off. The announcement came during an event held at Amazon's new headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and via a blog post on Amazon.com from Melissa Cha, VP of smart home at Amazon.

The feature requires no...

Continue reading...