By Joe Lonergan
Amazon echo show devices have a feature called show and tell.
So, before we go into the show and tell feature, what is an Amazon Echo show device?
Well Basically it is a Smart speaker with a touchscreen display built in. The echo comes in many different sizes, from 5inchs up to the premium 15 inches. If needs be, A screen reader called Voice view can be turned on with a voice command.
Moving onto the Show and tell feature,
This feature uses the camera on the front of the device to recognise objects when held about 12 inches from the camera.
While holding the object in your hand you have to say the voice command Alexa, what am I holding and then you will hear a scanning sound, you will be prompted to turn the item slowly so it can be recognised easier.
Note, the first time you give the voice command Alexa what am I holding? Alexa will explain to you how to use the feature and let you know how to access the tutorial again for future reference.
The main functional use case for this feature is for recognising products from your Kitchen or pantry.
For other products in our experience, it seemed to take a wild guess and only get the answer right occasionally. But it was fairly good at recognising canned or boxed food products.Ā Of course, recognition also depended on a couple of variables like lighting and background and the way the user has held the product in front of the camera. Also the location of the device can matter, is it raised, sitting on a counter or hanging on a wall.
Also keep in mind the Echo show 5 has only a 2MP camera and has slower processing power whereas the echo show 15 has a 5MP camera and is a much more powerful device. There is an in between model, the Echo show 8 which boasts a 13.5MP camera. So one of the in between models could be the one to go for.
Verdict:
Show and tell is a handy assistant in the Kitchen for recognising boxes of cereal or canned food products but on occasion It came back with some strange results, but in the future, it can only get better especially with the influence of AI technology. Sometimes it picks up some text and will read it back to you, but it is not suitable to read a document or post, there is many other more suitableĀ Ā technologies out there for that type of task.