Amazon says updated Echo can now control Belkin WeMo and Philips Hue

Amazon has claimed that Echo has been updated to support a variety of connected devices from companies including Belkin WeMo and Philips Hue.

Amazon informed its customers by sending an email to them.

Amazon Echo are serves as a virtual assistant of sorts offering to play music, answer questions and shop by voice, will now work to control the lights and other appliances in people's home.

According to the TechCrunch, Echo will initially support WeMo's Switch, Insight Switch, and Light Switch and Hue's A19, Lux, BR30, Bloom and LightStrip lights, the email advised. But these are possibly only the first of the many products Amazon is trying to integrate, as it tries to position Echo as an always at service assistant and an interface to the connected home.

Amazon Echo is a cylindrical device with seven microphones that help it listen to voice commands while filtering out background noise. It then process that voice input by connecting to Amazon's web-based servers, which is how it's able to get better at processing and responding to user commands over time. The product first launch with support for playback of music from Amazon Music Library, Prime Music, TuneIn and iHeartRadio, as well as news and weather info from local radio, NPR, ESPN via TuneIn and more. And it answers basic questions by way of Wikipedia. They are retailed at USD 200.

Amazon says to use new functions, the customers will have to first connect their WeMo and Hue devices to their home Wi-Fi network and name them in their respective apps. Then, they will have to instruct Echo's assistant "Alexa" to find the appliances using a simple command: "Alexa, discovery my appliances." Afterwards, they will be able to interact with those devices using natural language instructions.