Amazon Echo Integration

Ok, I know this sounds like overkill, but it could be fun. The echo works great with my wemo switches. Think of it, your neighbors dog is going number two on your lawn again… “Alexa turn on the front sprinkler.” :smile: Outside of the increased functionality, it could be a good way to promote the iro device to a wider audience.

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@JimB Looks cool! Do you know if they have an open API?

Looks like you can signup to participate. https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/echo

@badwzrd Oh cool, I’ll sign us up to see if we can get in the beta.

Amazon just released the Alexa Skills Kit - A Free SDK For Developers…check out the press release…I think they are talking to you guys @franz :wink:

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jun. 25, 2015-- (NASDAQ: AMZN)–Alexa is the cloud-based voice service that powers Amazon Echo, a new category of device designed around your voice. Today, Amazon announced the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), a collection of self-service APIs and tools that make it fast and easy for developers to create new voice-driven capabilities for Alexa. With a few lines of code, developers can easily integrate existing web services with Alexa or, in just a few hours, they can build entirely new experiences designed around voice. No experience with speech recognition or natural language understanding is required–Amazon does all the work to hear, understand, and process the customer’s spoken request so a developer doesn’t have to. The Alexa Skills Kit is free–learn more and get started with the preview at https://developer.amazon.com/ASK.

Examples of skills developers can create with the Alexa Skills Kit include:

  • A hobbyist developer can enable Alexa to access his or her child’s school lunch menu–then, each morning simply ask, “Alexa, ask Ballard
    Elementary School what’s for lunch today” and decide whether to pack
    a lunch for the child.

A device maker with an Internet-connected sprinkler system can integrate its sprinklers with Alexa, so a customer can say, "Alexa, ask my sprinkler to water my lawn for 15 minutes."

  • A surf report provider can create a new skill for Alexa that lets customers ask for the latest conditions at their favorite break by
    saying “Alexa, ask Surf Status for my local forecast.”
  • The maker of a smart vacuum cleaner can create a skill for Alexa that lets customers control their vacuum by saying “Alexa, tell the
    vacuum to start cleaning the living room.”
  • A fitness service can enable Alexa to access a user’s workout history, so a customer can say “Alexa, ask My Fitness how many miles
    I have run this week.”
  • A baseball fantasy league can make a new skill for Alexa, so managers can simply say, “Alexa, ask Fantasy Baseball to change my
    lineup and start Felix Hernandez today.”

@wbhartmanii I signed up and got the developer preview today.

Would love to mentor/champion a developer in our community if they wanted to hack on this.

:beers:

I’m your huckleberry …stay tuned…

Awesome, next you can help build our Apple Watch app :wink:

:beers:

If by Apple Watch you just mean an Echo duct taped to my wrist…then YES! :grinning:
Also had to pop in to say that I wish every tech device came with an API…this is such a smooth integration…I’ve already been able to make a AWS Lambda service to answer Alexa Intents…and simulate an Alexa request to turn on a zone…next step is to glue it all together and see if the ASK really works like they say it does!

I’m not worthy! Can’t wait to see the end result!

:beers:

I’ll test it if you need testers. I recently got an Echo and love it.

I also have an Echo and would be willing to test.

Just said “hey Alexa, tell the sprinklers to water the back yard”…and she did :smile: Thanks Alexa!

Thanks for the offers to test…I’ll let you know when its ready. Now that the basic “plumbing” is done, I’ll be designing the voice interface to make it a bit more functional which will probably take a little while since I’m just working on this for fun in the evenings!

I also need to do some research on an easy way to connect the echo account with the Rachio account. Right now I am just storing the API key which might be a bit clunky to speak and store…have to do some more testing there.

It looks like once it is done, it will be available as an app on the Amazon app store also.

Although @franz Alexa made me wonder, how do you actually pronounce “Rachio”? is it RACK-e-oh or RACH-e-oh? or maybe something else? ra-CHEE-oh?

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Fantastic!

Do they have OAuth2 integration?

:beers:

I Also have an echo if you need more testers.

Oh I so want this!!! :slight_smile:

Any movement on this?

I am waiting on this as well

@Pepbill @sidhartha100 …not much movement since its just some tinkering I do in my free time. Ran into a bit of a snag figuring out how to make my app easily extendable for others to use. Still working on it when I have the time, but those pesky jobs that pay the bills have to come first! :slight_smile:

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Care to share your code? Assuming you are using Lambda for the execution? I’m starting getting up and running seeing what you are doing would help me learn as well as get ideas.

Thanks!

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