Hacker News Reader

Alexa is barely home automation... it's a voice controlled switch in 99% of use. Home automation is events responding to triggers, as if by magic, not "Alexa, kitchen lights on", nor too any real extent voice controlled scenes.

If I were a betting man I'd take a wager that by the end of Q1 2019 there'll be basic automation support built into Alexa, in the form of "when this motion sensor goes off turn on the lights", and a fairly robust set of functionality by the end of 2019.

You can already do that with Routines.

https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/28/alexa-can-now-play-your-f...

Disclaimer - work on Alexa, but not this.

Or the FB's own thing is not ready yet. You might get software update to add FB's assistant if/when they do it.

Or, voice assistant is not the market FB want to compete on.

The future of devices is multi-assistant, like Sonos does with the Play One. I expect a V2 model of this device to incorporate Google, et al