There have been a few Alexa-enabled devices from third-parties, but only Amazon's own hardware uses its fancy far-field microphones and speech processing technology. That's going to change soon, though. Amazon has announced the availability of the Amazon Alexa 7-Mic Far-Field Development Kit, which will let third-parties develop better Alexa devices.

The kit will give Amazon's partners access to the same circular 7-microphone array that's used on the Amazon Echo, which will be supported by "leading chipset providers." Amazon even provides demo hardware. The software will include Amazon's proprietary engine for wake word recognition, beamforming, noise reduction, and echo cancellation. Developers also get some reference software for device control and communication with the Alexa voice service.

The development kit is not available to all comers—it's part of a controlled invite-only program from Amazon. OEMs that want to get access to the kit can request an invite from Amazon online.