There's a new API from Amazon that can be used to let apps play video feeds recorded by smart home cameras. The Cameras Recap API can be used to view videos on Echo Show, Echo Spot, Fire TV, and Fire Tablets.

The Cameras Recap API is part of the Smart Home Skill API, which provides a way to enable Alexa voice interaction to control and check the status of cloud-connected devices. Alexa interprets customer utterances and sends messages to your skill that communicate these requests. The Smart Home Skill API also lets you display the up-to-date status of configured devices in the Alexa app.

The Cameras Recap API makes use of the fact that security cameras such as Ring, Arlo, Cloud Cam, and August create a media recording when an event is detected such as motion or sound. There's a MediaMetaData feature that can be implemented so that Alexa is notified when a new media recording is added to the camera history. It is also notified when an existing media recording is deleted from history.  The API can be used to respond to requests for updated information about a particular media recording.

Alexa stores the list of media recordings that are provided and responds to requests to view recordings. Only the list is stored in Alexa, the recordings are stored in the cloud storage for the smart device. Users can ask things like "Alexa, show the last activity at my front door" and the Alexa device retrieves the media the user requested and shows it to them.  Support for the Cameras Recap API is currently available from Ring, Arlo, Cloud Cam, and August. This new capability is available today to developers in the US with support for additional international locales coming soon.

More Information

Alexa Skills Kit

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