Alexa's 'Certified for Humans' wants to eliminate smart-home headaches
Amazon wants you to be able to set up your smart home even if you don't know anything about tech.
Amazon wants your smart home to be simpler. Building off of the "frustration-free setup" announced last year, the company announced the "Certified for Humans" program at its Amazon hardware event in Seattle on Wednesday.
The program is aimed at connected lights, plugs and small appliances . The idea is that devices with this certification will be simple to set up and simple to use. If you're building a smart home around an Amazon device like the new Amazon Echo Studio smart speaker, you'll be able to quickly identify which gadgets fit in easily through this certification. Amazon tested each device with a committee of people who were specifically not tech experts.
To achieve the certification, devices need to use frustration-free setup. This allows Alexa to share your Wi-Fi credentials so you don't have to renter the info. The device needs to allow over-the-air updates to happen in the background. Finally, you need to be able to setup and control the devices with the Alexa app.
As with the rest of Amazon's wide range of compatible smart home devices, you'll of course be able to control these gadgets with a voice command to the company's assistant, Alexa.