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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Alexa skills

Delta Faucet Will Soon Let You Pour Water With Your Voice (Exclusive)

Want to pour yourself a glass of water with your voice? It looks like you soon can with a Delta Faucet.

The Spoon recently discovered a new Alexa skill from Delta Faucet company that will allow you to do such things are pour a glass of water or fill your coffee machine simply by asking Alexa. The skill looks like it will work with forthcoming voice-enabled Delta Faucet product or products enabled by what the faucet maker is calling its “voice module” and the Delta voice web app.

The only problem is if you want to buy the Delta voice module or register for your Delta voice account with the web app, neither of those exist today. In fact, the only clue to Delta’s voice-enabled faucet – at least as of now – is the Alexa skill called Delta. My guess is the company is preparing to launch a new voice-enabled line of faucets in a few weeks at CES or the upcoming Kitchen and Bath Show.

There’s also a good chance these faucets will connect to Wi-Fi. As far as I can tell, Delta doesn’t seem to have any Wi-Fi enabled faucets on the market today (but they do have a Wi-Fi leak detector), so it’s quite possible the mysterious ‘voice module’ is also a ‘Wi-Fi module’.

So far the Delta Alexa skill has one review, which again is strange because Delta hasn’t yet released its voice module or voice web app. Chances are the review, which calls the Delta skill “Easy Peasy”, was written by a Delta employee familiar with the initiative.

I don’t know about you, but I think using my voice to pour water is one of the cooler and more practical uses for Alexa in the home. I could imagine scenarios where my hands are full or simply messy, and using my voice to turn the water on or off with my voice just makes sense. I guess I’ll just have to wait until Delta actually releases the product that works with the skill before I get my hands on one.

Curious About The Echo Show? Here’s My ‘One Day’ Review

The Echo Show arrived this week. Like many, I was excited to put the latest addition to the Echo lineup through its paces.

Welcome to my one day review.

Why write a review after using a product one day? Doesn’t one need to spend weeks – maybe even months – with a product like the Echo Show to really understand the possibilities of this complicated and interesting new product?

Yes, but here’s the thing: For most products, you also are able to notice things right away. Not unlike a first date when you show up at the restaurant and notice your date for the night has three eyebrows or is a loud talker, there are things you notice right away when you’re around someone or something.

So here goes:

Out of Box Experience

The install experience was painless, quick and well optimized. Once I pulled the Show out of the box and plugged it in, it walked (and talked) me through the installation.

The device found my Wi-Fi network, had me enter my password, and within a minute it had checked in with the cloud and knew this was Michael Wolf’s new Echo Show. The Show started to download a software update, which took about five minutes. Overall, the product was installed and running in 10 minutes.

The Sound

For about five minutes, I thought this device sounded horrible. Then I saw the layer of protective plastic over the speaker.

This is why I don’t write five minute reviews.

Plastic removed, the Echo Show sounds good. Not quite as good as my Sonos Play 3, but it could give my Play 1 a run for its money.  Turned up, the Echo Show is fairly loud.

Volume is controllable via Alexa, but it also has volume up and down buttons on top of the device, which I like. Sometimes you just like old fashioned physical buttons.

The Echo Show Shape and Look

Like many this week, I was surprised at the beefiness of the Show when it arrived at my house. This is mostly due to Amazon’s early press images and videos which showed the the latest Echo mainly from the front of the device. When you actually see the Show in all its glory, it’s a lot deeper than you expect.

So Amazon intended for you to mainly see the Show from one side: its front. This is clear not only because of how deep and heavy the back side of the Show is, but also because the sides of the device are angled inward. It reminded me of those early big screen TVs before everything became ultra-thin.

Because of these angled sides, you can walk from side to side and still have the illusion that this is a thin device. See video below:

Given the shape of the device, it works best against a wall. While I’m sure that with so many of today’s modern kitchens having islands, I’m sure many Echo Shows will end up stranded one one (sorry), but I’d suggest putting it up against a backsplash as it just looks better.

The device’s front screen leans ever-so-slightly backward. When I pushed the device with my hand and tried to tip it over from the front, it stuck stubbornly in place. It’s clear that Amazon gave some thought to how this device would sit on a surface like a kitchen counter as people and things moved around it and possibly bump into it.

Visual Information + Voice = Game Changer

Here’s something I realized right away: By finally giving Alexa a screen, Amazon has opened up immense new possibilities for potential applications and content opportunities.

This may sound like an overstatement, but it isn’t.

The main reason for this is the powerful combination of synchronized voice control/visual information. While the Amazon visual skill cupboard is slightly bare at this point, you can see from what few samples there are that by adding visual information, Amazon’s created a new and exciting direction for the Echo.

I spent the most time with new Allrecipes visual skill. While the skill feels very much like a 1.0 effort (I’ll have a review of the Allrecipes skill soon), but I can nonetheless see the potential. I was able to bring up recipes, pick one I like, browse the ingredients and cooking instructions.

But the coolest feature of the Allrecipes app was the ability to play and pause videos.  This is really important because if you’re like me, you like to watch and rewatch videos as you move through the cook process.

At the risk of being repetitive, let me say it again: it’s this combination of voice search and command with visually rich information in a shared-screen computing device is by far the most exciting thing about the Echo Show.

There are other aspects about having an always on screen that are important. The “sleep screen” info on the Echo Show is unobtrusive, natural and well placed. Maybe because Amazon has had so much practice creating sleep screen content  with the Kindle, but it’s clear Amazon thought about placing interesting and relevant info on a device. With the Echo Show, the device not only shows basic temperature and time info, but it scrolls through headlines, suggestions for using, etc.

The Camera

Of course, the camera’s most obvious benefit is the ability to communicate with others via voice chat. While I haven’t done a drop-in with my own Show yet, I did try it out in store at Amazon Books and the video quality seems really good.

Less obvious is the camera is being used as a sensor. When I turn out the lights the screen soon goes into soft-light mode, which I thought was a nice feature. And while it is early days for the Show, I expect at some point Amazon will unlock other computer vision capabilities that could really unlock contextually relevant information.

“I Would Use That”

When it comes to Alexa and our first two Echo devices, let’s just say my wife Tiffany has been indifferent to annoyed. Sure, she’ll ask Alexa to play music, but for the most part doesn’t see the value.

But after a few minutes playing with Echo Show, she was sold.

She tried out the Allrecipes app. She searched for a recipe and tried the video feature and liked it. She started, paused, played a video of making a strawberry smoothie, something my daughter wanted to make.

After a few minutes, my wife said, “this is something I would use.”

And of course, she then suggested I get rid of another one of my kitchen gadgets taking up counter space in order to put this one in the kitchen.

But hey, progress, right?

Behind The Bot: Cooking Competition Creator Michael Gyarmathy

Whether you’re looking for a recipe suggestion, wine pairing or just want to chat with a celebrity chef, you’re in luck: there’s a bot for that.

With bots of all flavors flooding the market, the food space is particularly ripe for innovation as enterprising coders and food entrepreneurs try their hand at creating that virtual sous chef or grocery shopping assistant.

Here at the Spoon, we read and try out new foodbots all the time. In doing our research, we started to wonder about the people behind the bots and the choices they made in bringing their bot to market.

So, we decided to ask them.

This is our first in an occasional Q&A series with the person behind the bot. This first bot-maker is Michael Gyarmathy, the creator of an Alexa Skill called Cooking Competition.

Cooking Competition is a super basic skill that suggests a changing array of ingredient suggestions for you to test out your cooking skills. I tried it out on my own rather than facing off against friends, so I can being uses as a daily inspirational to come up with a cook-from-scratch meal ideas as much as for a competition with friends.

Whether you use Cooking Competition for ingredient suggestions or as a way to test your cooking prowess against friends, you can get started here.

Here’s our Q&A with Michael Gyarmathy:

Where did you get the idea for your Cooking Competition?

This Alexa skill is inspired by cooking competition TV shows such as Food Network’s Chopped. The concept is simple: compete with your friends in a test of culinary skill by coming up with dishes that incorporate the special “basket ingredients” provided by Alexa.

 Why did you choose to use the Alexa Skill vs other platforms?
The Amazon Alexa platform intrigued me the most due to ease of development and distribution. Amazon’s developer documentation provides a great starter template and then leaves you build whatever you desire. From my experience, the review and publishing process is also very simple and straightforward.
 
What is unique about developing for voice interface vs. other AI platforms?
I think voice interfaces are extremely useful in the kitchen because often times both of my hands are tied up in whatever I’m cooking, and being able to control a device with my voice rather than touching a screen is a game-changer. The AI aspect of the Alexa platform is an added benefit and will continue to be leveraged more and more in applications as the barrier-to-entry for developers continues to lower.
 
Why a food-focused skill?
Aside from programming, a lot of my down time is spent in the kitchen with my wife trying out new recipes. Cooking is a huge hobby of mine, and I want to find ways to combine my passions for cutting-edge technology and delicious food.
 
Tell us about yourself (Is this your first bot, other apps/software, education)? 
This Alexa skill was my first experience in the world of voice-driven interfaces and AI applications. In my day job, I work as a Mobile Solutions Consultant for Credera, a management and technology consulting firm located in Dallas. Prior to that, I graduated with a Computer Science degree from Texas A&M University.
 
What do you have in store for Cooking Competition (other bot platforms, new features, etc)?
The Cooking Competition skill could be improved by storing previous user interactions to influence future responses to the user. I’d also be interested in adding links to more information about the random basket ingredients as part of the response card in the Alexa app in case the user is unfamiliar with one of the ingredients.

Ok Google, What’s For Dinner?

When Google Home first arrived on the scene, Mike and Ashley speculated on the Smart Kitchen Show about how it would stack up against Amazon Echo. Amazon’s big entrance into the smart home, Echo came with convenient functions like timers, grocery lists, playing on-demand streaming music and radio services and eventually included recipe skills. It was an ideal device to sit on your kitchen counter.

Google introduced its answer to Echo but at first lacked the functionality that Echo has grown to enjoy due to its open API and thousands of skills developed by third parties. One of those skill areas that’s seen growth is in food & beverage, especially recipes. But this week, Google partnered with big food content houses like the Food Network, New York Times and Bon Appetit to give Home users access to over 5,000 recipes that can be read step by step by the Google Assistant.

The interesting thing about Google Home’s announcement is the way Google is adding functionality to its device. Amazon’s Alexa relies on skills developed by other companies – in order to get access to Allrecipes content, for example, you have to enable that skill in your app before you can use it.

Google takes a different approach; if you have a specific recipe you want to look up, you can head to the Google Assistant app on your phone, pick it out and send it to Google Home to walk through. So a component of this feature still involves your phone – unless you want suggested recipes, and then you can just ask “Ok Google, let’s make spaghetti” and Google’s Assistant will suggest a recipe for you. That suggestion feature, enabled without any input on the part of the user, is fairly unique.

The process is a little more intuitive and baked into the platform than Alexa skills, which sometimes can be clunky depending on how the developer choose to integrate. Some skills require you to say “Alexa, ask (brand/company) to XYZ” which is an awkward way to speak and harder to remember.

Google also choose powerhouse brands to partner with for this integration – collectively, Food Network, NYT and Bon Appetit have amassed loads of food content through the years and probably have recipes for just about anything you’d want to cook. In fact, these and other publication and content houses are constantly thinking about how to leverage their digital warehouses of recipes and food knowledge and partnerships like these are easy ways to make money outside of traditional advertising.

According to Google, the feature will start rolling out in the coming days. We’ll finally be able to say – Ok Google, let’s eat.

How Alexa’s New Developer Tool Will Power Voice-Assisted Food Delivery

Last week, Amazon debuted a new device location API that gives Alexa skills access to the location data in a consumer’s device settings, a move which could unleash a new wave of skill-powered food delivery services.

According to the developer documentation, the new API (application programming interface) will require that the user to give consent for the data when the request is made for the data. There are two levels of data granularity available: the full address (street location, city, state, zip) or country and postal code only. When a user enables a skill that requests access to location data, they will be prompted to give approval in the Alexa app (it cannot be done with voice alone), an extra step that provides an obvious safeguard to ensure the privacy of the consumer.

There’s a good chance the new location API could help add some excitement to what appears to be some pretty bare shelves when it comes to skill-powered food delivery. While there are approximately 268 or so food and drink related skills available to US users of Alexa, only 13 of these today are related to food delivery, and most of those are for things such as pizza delivery or Amazon’s own restaurant delivery service. With the new location API, it’s conceivable that a new wave of third party food delivery service related skills will be born.

Amazon gave early access to the new device location API to Just Eat, a UK based food delivery service provider with 27 thousand restaurant partners. By using the device location API, the Just Eat Alexa skill will be able to better optimize restaurant selection based on the customer’s location.

Alexa’s new Skill Dashboard

In related news, Amazon also announced a new skills dashboard, which will allow skill developers to better analyze trends, visualizations and pull away insights around aggregate skill usage.  One of those new data sets they will be able to analyze in the future will be location trends, which would be useful for food delivery companies which want to know what neighborhoods are more likely to use Alexa skill ordering vs more traditional methods.

All of this fits into my theory that Amazon is shifting its connected home commerce focus towards Alexa and away from Dash, which seems to have stagnated in terms of new adopters. More thoughts on that later.

Anova Rolls Out Alexa and Google Home Integrations With ‘Guided Cook’ Capabilities

If you’re a member of the rapidly growing sous vide community, there’s a good chance you are one of tens of thousands that go online to share recipes and suggestions for taking the craft – and that evening’s meal – to the next level.

And if you’re an enterprising user of Anova’s sous vide circulator who just so happened to hack a custom Alexa skill to cook with your machine, you might just share your idea and get the attention of both the community and Anova itself.

That’s exactly what happened when David Zielezna shared his new Alexa skill on Reddit. After creating a stir in the /sousvide reddit, an Anova community manager reached out to David to put him in touch with the Anova software team. Before long, the sous vide enthusiast from Australia was offered the opportunity to create the official Anova Alexa integration.

And so today Anova is rolling out their new Alexa skill based on David’s work, as well as a new Google Home action that is available to Android customers.

The Alexa skill and Google Home Actions will have what Anova is calling ‘Guided Cook’ capabilities, which allow the user to access the guide information from the Anova app and work through a series of options to optimize and work through a cook. In the same way a person would navigate a branching tree of selections in the app to optimize cooking a meal, the new Alexa Skill and Google Home Action allow users to input the protein type, doneness and thickness via voice in a series of commands.

Here’s an example of how this will be done using Google Home Invocations (commands) within the Google Home Action.

User: Hey Google, tell Anova to help me cook a steak.
GH: Steak has the following choices: A) Porterhouse, B) Ribeye, C) Strip, and D) Tenderloin. Which would you like?
User: Ribeye
GH: How thick is your ribeye in inches?
User: One point five inches
GH: The ribeye steak recipe has the following choices for how you can cook one point five inch thick ribeye: A) Very rare to rare, B) Medium rare, C) Medium, D) Medium well, and E) Well done. Which would you like?
User: Medium rare
GH: The precision cooker settings for Ribeye Steak using one point five inch ribeye cooked medium rare are 129 degrees for one hour. should I start your cooker with these settings?
User: Yes
GH: I told Anova to start a cook for your Ribeye Steak at 129 degrees for one hour. Please refer to this recipe in the anova app for an ingredient list and full preparation steps.

The Guided Cook capabilities are available today with the Alexa Skill, and will be available via an update to the Google Home Action on April 4th.

With over half of Amazon Echos and likely a similar percentage of Google Home products ending up in the kitchen, Anova’s embrace of voice control makes sense. The kitchen has been a fertile area for skill creation over the past year or more, and now with Google Home doing what it can to ratchet up its third party voice interactions, we’ll see even more.

Bottom line, you can expect a lot more people talking to their cooking devices in the coming years.

You can watch David Zielezna’s Alexa skill in action in the video below:

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The Best Alexa Skills For Your Smart Kitchen

The Amazon Echo has become almost synonymous with kitchen tech – with the grocery list assistance and Amazon Prime ordering capabilities, early adopters of the voice assistant Bluetooth speaker set Echo right on their countertops. Amazon has done a nice job making sure that the Echo’s open API means just about anyone can develop a third-party skill for the device. So far that’s led to thousands of skills, with varying degrees of usefulness.

But what about skills for the actual kitchen? While there’s no shortage of smart home skills for the Echo, the functionality for the kitchen isn’t as robust just yet. But there are a handful of skills, both native and third-party, that can make cooking and eating a little bit easier. The Amazon Echo app lists close to 100 skills in the Food & Drink category alone – though many of them have one star and bad reviews. Some enable helpful resources like how to bake a cupcake or the right amount of time to store certain foods in the fridge. But others, like the “Sourdough” skill – dedicated to making different variations of sourdough bread, seem more trivial.

We’ve culled the list of kitchen-related Alexa skills and made a list of the ones that seem most useful to help consumers get the most out of Echo and turn the device into an on-demand sous chef or bartender. We’ll continue to update as the list grows!

Recipes Skills

Food Network
Alexa, send me the recipe I saw on The Pioneer Woman yesterday.
The Food Network is the first major cuilnary network to join forces with Amazon Echo to deliver a unique skill. At a basic level, you can ask Alexa what time your favorite cooking shows are going to air – but even better, she can give you the recipes that you saw on those shows to make in your own kitchen. Now if she could only bring Top Chef contestants to your door via Uber.

Campbell’s Kitchen
Alexa, ask Campbell’s Kitchen what’s for dinner
Campbell’s is the first and only Big Food manufacturer to take advantage of Alexa’s presence in the kitchen to make recipe suggestions. Of course, Campbell’s wants you to center your meals around their products, but attempts to make dinnertime easy with a daily list of five recipes.

CookBook
Alexa, ask cookbook how to (make what you to eat for your meal)
This skill is the most intriguing in the recipe category as it not only gives you the ingredients and steps to cook your chosen meal, it will also read back the recipe to you as you prepare your food. Arguably the hands-free functionality of Amazon’s AI interface is one of the most compelling use cases for the device.

Meal Idea
Alexa, ask meal idea to give me some meal ideas
The verbal activation of this skill is redundant, but the premise behind this skill is solid. Stumped about what to make for dinner? Tell Alexa what you’ve got on hand and she will suggest some recipes. Helpful during meal prep or while making your grocery list for the week.

Alcoholic Beverages

The Bartender
Alexa, ask the bartender, what’s in a [Tom Collins]?
This skill gives Alexa access to over ten thousand cocktail recipes and instructions on how to make them. Use this to impress your friends at a dinner party or to try out new drinks after a long day at work.

MySomm
Alexa, recommend a wine for a roast chicken.
Ever wanted to be friends with a wine expert? The MySomm skill gives you your own personal sommelier who can make hundreds of recommendations based on what food you’re eating. Good for when you’re having company or when you’ve cooked a nice family meal and want the perfect drink to pair.

What Beer
Alexa, ask what beer goes with a burger?
What Beer is like MySomm, but for beer. You can ask What Beer for pairs of hundreds of food items, mostly common meals like burgers, fish, steak and desserts.

Cooking Assistance

Meat Thermometer
Alexa, ask Meat Thermometer what is the best temperature for veal?
We won’t address the fact that you’re cooking veal – aka baby cow – for dinner. Instead we’ll say that this tool is incredibly helpful if you’re waiting for something to finish cooking to a safe temperature before you remove it from its heating source. Turkey, chicken, fish – you name it, Meat Thermometer can tell you the exact temp for safe eating.

Measurements
Alexa, how many tablespoons are in one cup?
This is a native Alexa skill and one that demonstrates the real use case for a voice assistant in the kitchen. Basic questions while you’re cooking can be answered, the info given in an instant and saving you from cleaning your hands, pulling out your phone and searching the internet for the right answer.

Timer
Alexa, set a timer for 30 minutes.
Also a native Alexa skill but another handy tool that you can use for almost any meal. If you’ve got more than one thing on the stove, in the oven or on the grill and you’re trying to monitor them all, it’s helpful to have more than one timer. Also if you’re using the Echo to listen to podcasts or music or the news while you cook, it will interrupt the entertainment to let you know time is up.

Caloric Intake
Alexa, how many calories in a package of Oreos?
A lot – you probably don’t need Alexa to tell you that. But a helpful tool for meal prep and general nutritional guidelines as you plan what to eat and try to stay healthy.

So there you have it – a list of the most helpful Alexa kitchen & food skills. We’ll update this list from time to time as new skills are developed and Alexa becomes an even more helpful sous chef. Stay tuned.