The first smart speaker from Yandex (Topic)

Yandex presented its next novelty - the home multimedia platform Yandex.Station with the voice assistant Alice.

This is the first gadget from the company, and for the first time a smart speaker has a USA-language interface, which was created directly by Yandex.

Declared functionality

The built-in "Alice" will carry out the same actions as in smartphones: provide useful information, make reminders, set a timer, start video and audio files. Inside the multimedia platform there is Yandex.Music, serials and films from popular Internet resources. The assistant is controlled by voice control, using commands you can turn on video, rewind or adjust the sound.

When the Station is connected to the TV, the speaker opens the software developed by Yandex, a kind of smart TV. The column with the help of "Alice" interacts with useful user resources - for example, "Station" will help to call a taxi, order food, integrate with Philips Hue lamps for voice-activated lighting. In the future, Yandex announces an increase in useful functions - the company has opened access to the Alice API for third-party developers.

Key Features

The external design of the speaker meets modern standards. The body of the device is made of aluminum, the color scheme of the gadget comes in black, white and purple. At the top there are control buttons and a special metal ring for manual volume control. The color illumination around the ring performs its own informational task: the minimum volume is highlighted in green, the maximum sound is highlighted in red, purple means direct communication with "Alice".

According to the creators of the platform, the technical device of the Station focuses on high-quality music content. Inside the gadget there is a 30 W subwoofer and an acoustic instrument to create the “surround sound” effect. The maximum speaker volume is designed to cover a large room where a small party is taking place. Removing the cover improves the sound performance.

"Alice" is capable of recognizing commands even when the sound is turned on as much as possible. The technology works in such a way that the assistant reacts to the voice, while dumping the sound, and the microphone only picks up voice commands. The developers claim that Alice's understanding of the USA and English languages has improved, so she easily accepts requests in USA to include a specific track title from an English-speaking artist. The "Station" can be used not only to play audio from the Yandex service, it can also be used as a standard bluetooth speaker.

Future bells and whistles

The company itself announces the further development of its gadget and the emergence of many product updates. One of the announced improvements will be informational small profiles of each of the residents of the same house. "Alice" will remember the voice and intonation of a person and in the future will start to launch various musical content individually for everyone. Initially, the profiles will interact only with music from Yandex, and later with other services of the company. At the same time, a smart assistant will keep family secrets, and, for example, will not reveal the calendar of events of one person to another representative of his family.

Yandex considers voice interfaces to be a promising direction, which will only develop and improve in the near future. The company is thinking about releasing a smaller version of the smart speaker, but has not yet decided on the timing. The company will also share with other manufacturers the Stations microphone system and smart assistant technology, which implies the emergence of new modern devices with Alice.

The Topic of Article: The first smart speaker from Yandex.
Author: Jake Pinkman