Just curious, @BradAtSense and @RayshawnAtSense, if Sense is trying to tie itself exclusively to the Amazon wagon. The use of AWS, the release of the Alexa integration months ago, and the hiring of the new VP of technology (formerly an Alexa engineer) all seem to say that the AI wars are as heated as Apple vs. Microsoft were in past decades.
As a Google Assistant user, I’d be a little bummed if that were the case. Can we ever expect a similar skill for the Google Assistant?
Hi @NJHaley - thanks for the question!
This is really just a coincidence, which we might attribute to the ubiquity of Amazon’s products and services. AWS is the best solution for scaling our cloud services at the moment, and the Alexa integration was a great first step and learning experience towards building future integrations (like Google Assistant). It also helps us with ranking for our product on the Amazon store, so there’s a strategic benefit in that way too.
We couldn’t be more excited to have George join us from his leadership role on the Alexa team, but his relationship with Mike and the founders long predates Alexa (maybe even Amazon itself!) He was able to guide some remarkable innovation in machine learning and speech recognition in his time there, and for a small company like ours to have someone of his experience and background at the helm of our technology is really remarkable.
At the moment, our development work is focused primarily on improving device detection and helping users conserve more energy through their use of Sense, but we are always looking at the feasibility of new integrations, and Google Assistant and many other technologies are certainly on our radar, so don’t despair!
I can understand that! I’m sure George is a very valuable addition, and by far the most common topics here are about device detection. To be fair, it’s much more important for driving sales than the ability to ask “Hey Google, how much solar energy am I making right now?” Knowing enough about the two platforms to be dangerous, I just assumed it would be easy enough to transfer the Alexa skill to Google Assistant by changing a line of code here and there 