Amazon has just announced a new API for Alexa, which will work with popular security cameras. It’s the Camera Recap API. With this API, users will be able to ask, “Alexa, show the latest event from the [camera name]” and they’ll be able to see the latest event from that camera. Which could be when the camera detected people or motion. This would only work on an Alexa device that has a display. So something like the Fire TV, Fire Tablets, or the Echo Show/Spot.
According to Amazon’s blog post, this will work with Ring, August, Arlo, Logitech and the Amazon Cloud Cam security cameras. However, this is not available out of the box for all customers. You will need to wait for developers to use this API in an Alexa Skill, to be able to use this. Amazon does detail how to use this API in its blog post as well. It’s actually pretty simple for developers to get started using the Camera Recap API. Amazon does also mention that there are some performance and security requirements for this API as well. This is so that not just any skill can gain access to your security cameras around your home. Definitely a smart idea there.
Alexa has already been able to show a stream of your camera on a display – like a Fire TV, Fire Tablet or Echo Show – but this API is a bit different. It allows you to see the last event of what happened, instead of seeing the live stream. This means that you can see what actually happened, even if was hours ago. This is actually pretty useful for users, since they won’t need to pick up their phone and jump into the app and see what happened. They can just give Alexa a command to do it.