This is either the answer to a question nobody asked, or a really cool gadget for smart home owners and lovers of coffee. The Lavazza A Modo Moi Voicy – which we’ll call Voicy – is an Alexa enabled Coffee Machine!
In my kitchen, if you say “Alexa, ask Lavazza to make me a coffee” the machine kicks into gear, warms up and starts pouring you an espresso!
Now look, my first frustration here is you can’t say “Alexa make me a coffee” because in fact what you have in Voicy is two things, a coffee machine and an Amazon Echo speaker – they just happened to be built into the same housing. So to get it working you need to setup a Lavazza account in their app, get the machine online and THEN you go into the Alexa app and enable the Lavazza skill – like you would with any other “smart” Alexa compatible device.
So you are speaking to Alexa in the same way you would any other smart device. Of course, the Alexa wise among us will find ways to go further with routines you can personalise to ensure you say what you need.
And of course, the idea of a “hands-free” coffee is thwarted by the fact you need to put a capsule into this thing every time you make a coffee. Kinda defeats the purpose right?
A self- feeding set of maybe five capsules ready to go would be ideal.
Anyway, I realise how this might best be used by a coffee lover.
You love a coffee in the morning? Well, when you go to bed, get a cup out, put it in Voicy, and throw in your morning coffee capsule. Then, when you’re getting ready in the morning, upstairs or across the house – and you’ve got another Amazon Echo somewhere in the room, ask Alexa to make that coffee!
Why bother having an Echo speaker in the machine then? Easy – because the kitchen is one of the best places for a smart speaker.
Set a timer, play some music, add things to the shopping list. With Voicy by Lavazza, you have it all in one, no need for a separate Echo speaker.
On that front, it’s a winner.
But still, the execution could be so much better.
Oh, and be careful not to let anyone say the trigger words for that coffee if there’s no cup in the machine – that’s going to be messy!
