Voice assistants in the home are all the rage right now and Logitech has just announced it is bringing their popular Amazon Alexa Skill for the Logitech Harmony to Australia and New Zealand. This means Echo-enabled devices can now pick up your voice commands and control your TV. With this new skill, you can power on and off your favourite Harmony Activities, hands-free, using only your voice. Simply say “Alexa, turn on the TV,” or “Alexa, turn on Netflix” to start or stop your entertainment devices or favourite channels.
Voice assistants are great at taking simple voice strings and translating them into the steps required to pull off a complex instruction set. While setting timers, alarms and calendar entries take many steps to tap through on your phone, with your voice, it’s dramatically simplified. By extending voice instructions passed simple audio command and response, to now also control AV equipment like your TV, it brings far more value to the Alexa-enabled device you already own, simply by adding a Harmony Hub.
Head of Logitech Smart Home, Rory Dooley said,
“Enjoying and getting more out of your home entertainment control experience is important to us,” “Whether you can’t reach the remote or you don’t feel like getting up from the couch, using your voice with Harmony and Alexa makes controlling your TV entertainment more simple. We’ve seen the power of this integration in the U.S. and other countries around the world, and are excited to now deliver this to Australia and New Zealand.”
Harmony Activities can now control more than 275,000 devices, so there’s a strong chance the IoT devices in your home will already be supported. Another example of how you can use the Hub is calling upon your Good Morning Activity to turn your TV on, change the channel to your favourite Morning Show, all with one voice command to Alexa. Additionally, you can enjoy directly changing the channel, turning the volume up or down, or change inputs, just using your voice.
If you’re not familiar with the Hub, here’s an overview of the device and how it works with your mobile phone. The Harmony Hub costs A$149.95.
Availability
The Logitech Harmony Alexa Skill is now available to users in Australia and New Zealand. To take advantage of this new capability, launch the Alexa app on your smartphone, select Skills from the left-hand navigation menu, and search for ‘Harmony.’ Any Logitech Harmony hub-based product, such as the Logitech Harmony Elite, Logitech Harmony Companion and Logitech Harmony Hub, and an Alexa-enabled device such as Amazon Echo or Echo Dot, are required.
For more information on using Logitech Harmony remotes with Amazon Alexa, please visit support.myharmony.com/alexa.
