The Amazon Echo Show now integrates with the Vivint and August Home

Why it matters to you

Before this Echo Show integration, you had to pull out your smartphone to check your smart camera’s footage.

Amazon’s Echo Show has not been around for all that long, but smart home device makers are already jumping at the opportunity to integrate with the new technology. On Thursday, both Vivint and August Home (both of which produce smart cameras to keep your household safe) announced compatibility with Amazon’s new Alexa-enabled touchscreen device, making managing your connected devices easier than ever before.

Thanks to the new Vivint integration, you can now ask Alexa to show you live camera feeds from your indoor, outdoor, and doorbell cameras. If you say, “Alexa, show me my doorbell camera,” you will be able to look to your Echo Show and view content immediately. Similarly, the Echo will be able to control other Vivint smart home products, like smart locks, lights, garage doors, and thermostats. Of course, given that those products do not have cameras attached, Echo’s functionality here is not quite as special.

“We continue to expand our relationship with Amazon to enhance and simplify the smart home,” said Jeremy Warren, chief technology officer at Vivint Smart Home. “By enabling consumers to use their voice to access high-quality, live video and audio from their cameras, we’re giving them another convenient way to keep track of what’s happening in and around their homes.”

Similarly, for smart lock maker August Home, the Amazon Echo Show will now allow you to check out live video footage of what is happening outside your front door. If you have an August Doorbell Cam, you can ask Alexa to show your doorstep and watch real-time video of visitors. “It’s great to delight customers by adding value to the products they already own and rely on as part of their daily lives. We added the ability to control the August Smart Lock with Alexa earlier this year, which has been an extremely popular,” said Jason Johnson, CEO of August Home, Inc. “With the expansion of our Amazon Alexa skill, we are making it easier for our customers to control their Doorbell Cam. Now they can display video of visitors outside their door using their voice.”

This marks the first time that users have been able to divorce their smartphones when it comes to actually monitoring footage from the August Doorbell Cams or Vivint devices, and certainly drives home the usefulness of the Amazon Echo Show.