New Alexa Voice Service Integration for AWS IoT Core cost-effectively brings Alexa Voice to any type of connected device

Posted on: Nov 25, 2019

Alexa Voice Service (AVS) Integration is a new feature of AWS IoT Core that enables Alexa Voice to be produced on any type of connected device. AVS Integration for IoT Core reduces the cost of producing Alexa Built-in devices by up to 50% by offloading compute and memory intensive audio workloads to the cloud. With this reduction in production cost, customers can now cost-effectively build new categories of differentiated voice-enabled products such as light switches, thermostats, and small appliances. This allows consumers to talk directly to Alexa in new parts of their home, office, or hotel rooms for a truly ambient experience. 

Alexa Voice Service (AVS) Integration for IoT Core shifts media retrieval, audio decoding, audio mixing, and state management from a physical device to a new virtual Alexa Built-in device in the cloud. This lowers the hardware requirements of integrating AVS on a device from 50 MB of RAM to 1MB of RAM and ARM Cortex 'A' class microprocessors to ARM Cortex ‘M’ class microcontrollers. Once a device is connected to AWS IoT Core, customers can use a new set of AWS IoT-reserved MQTT topics to transfer audio messages between their devices and AVS. 

The AVS Integration for AWS IoT Core is available in all AWS regions where AWS IoT Core is available other than China (Beijing and Ningxia), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) and Middle East (Bahrain). See the AWS Region Table for the current list of regions for AWS IoT Core. To learn more about how to get started, view the AVS Integration for IoT Core Blog Post