Invoxia’s Triby portable speaker was the first non-Amazon device to support Amazon’s Alexa voice service when it launched last year.
Now Invoxia is launching a second-gen model, and the company says the new model is more than just a speaker, radio, digital assistant, and speakerphone. it’s also a hub that can control home automation tasks.
Triby IO is a portable speaker with an E Ink display and support for Alexa and IFTTTÂ (which isn’t surprising, since Alexa recently added IFTT support). The Triby IOÂ should be available during the first quarter of 2017 for $199.
The new Triby IO looks a lot like last year’s model, but the buttons are customizable, so they have a more generic look than the phone and radio-shaped buttons on the first-gen Triby.
Invoxia says you can use Triby to control smart thermostats, lights, and other smart home products. You can also set up presets on your Triby which can be triggered from other smart home devices.
For instance, you can link Triby to smart kitchen devices so that when your oven or slow cooker finishes making a meal, a message will be sent to the Triby… which can send an intercom call to other Triby devices in your house to let everyone know dinner is ready.