Amazon Echo’s far field voice recognition is simply amazing (and I use a lot of voice recognition). Understands everybody who comes to the house across almost the whole first floor. It’s the main way we control lights now. Can’t wait for ST integration, several people are working on it.
The Echo is a good example of an expensive, big, mains-powered device. That may well prove to be the future for many types of home automation. But it’s a real shift from the smaller-cheaper-battery-powered direction of the last few years.