Amazon Alexa Voice Service – Alexa Skills that simplify your life

Alexa Voice Service, or AVS for short, is the brains behind Amazon’s voice-controlled Echo devices. These include the digital voice assistant Amazon Alexa.
AVS gives you the possibility to create individual links between different devices. These links can be activated by voice commands so that interactive communication takes place.

What makes this special is the fact that Amazon Alexa Voice Services are located in the cloud.

Alexa Skills that simplify your life

Alexa Skills are voice commands that you can create individually with the Alexa Skills Kit. Examples of these Alexa Skills could include answering specific questions, announcing the weather forecast, or controlling the lights in the living room.

Use Amazon Alexa Voice Service to create custom Alexa Skills

To create your individual Alexa Skills you have to choose between different Skill-Types.

distinguish

The Custom Skill

The custom skill lets you program any type of request.

You will have to define which specific task should be accomplished and with which word this Alexa Skill will be activated.
The possibilities offered by this skill include researching information on the Internet or even ordering a pizza via voice control.

The Smart Home Skill

The Smart Home Skill API lets you control smart home devices. This allows you to e.g. set at which voice command the light should become brighter or at which word the light temperature should change.

The video skill

With the Video Skill API, cloud-enabled video services can be controlled through the individualized Amazon Alexa Voice Service. This makes it possible to play the movie or search for a specific series by using a certain word phrase.

The Flash Briefing Skill

The Flash Briefing Skill can be set up so that when you give a voice command, Alexa will read out the current messages you have defined. So you can e.g. set your local news stations to be informed only about the local news.

The Music Skill

The fourth Skill is the Music Skill API, which allows music-based content to be played and generally controlled by an Alexa-enabled device.

Amazon Alexa Voice Service Cost

There is a way to use this service almost for free. In theory, if you download the free Alexa app, you’ll only incur your internet charges.
Otherwise, there are no ongoing costs. To extend the Amazon Alexa Voice Service experience, Amazon also offers the Amazon Echo in different versions, in which speakers are already present and voice calls are also possible.

Languages in which the Amazon Alexa Voice Service can be played back

So far, this service can be used in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese, as well as Hindi.

With the Amazon Echo, it is even possible to select the local accent in addition to the different languages. It should be noted, however, that the AVS may have difficulty understanding you if you speak with a different accent.

Supported regions

– USA

– Great Britain

– Canada

– Germany

– Austria

– France

– India

– Japan

– Australia

– New Zealand

– Italy

– Spain

– Mexico

– Brazil