Remember Alexa Gadgets Toolkit launched by Amazon in beta in September 2018? The company has now announced the rollout of the Gadgets Toolkit in all locales where Alexa-enabled devices are sold.
With this move, developers in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, can now build Echo companion devices too. With the Alexa Gadgets Toolkit, you can build companion devices that either enhance Alexa’s capabilities, or create a new interactive experience between the product, Alexa, and the customer.
The Alexa Gadgets Toolkit offers self-service APIs and interfaces that expose metadata of Alexa’s capabilities through compatible Echo devices. You may use Custom Interfaces to create interactive two-way communication between your product and its paired Echo device, or choose from several Defined Interfaces to build a product that reacts in response to some of Alexa’s most popular capabilities.
The Alexa Gadgets Toolkit also includes technical documentation and sample code to facilitate direct pairing and connectivity, communication, and over-the-air (OTA) updates between your product and its paired Echo device.