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Alexa Skills Projects
Alexa Skills Projects

Alexa Skills Projects: Build exciting projects with Amazon Alexa and integrate it with Internet of Things

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Alexa Skills Projects

Hello World, Alexa!

"The human voice is the organ of the soul."
                                   – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the previous chapter, we discussed the evolution of various voice-based personal assistants, discussed the capabilities of each of those, and finally compared two significant smart home-based personal assistants, namely Alexa and Google Home.

In this chapter, we will focus on Alexa. We will first learn about Amazon Echo, the smart speaker from Amazon, which enables a user to interact with Alexa and its various flavors. Later on, we will move on to learn about the anatomy of Alexa and what goes into making Alexa so interactive. We will do so by covering the following topics:

  • An Introduction to Amazon Echo
  • Anatomy of an Alexa Skill
  • Building a Hello...

An Introduction to Amazon Echo

Often, the term Amazon Echo is used synonymously with Alexa. However, although both are interrelated, they point to very different things—Amazon Echo is the actual smart speaker (hardware), which is a gateway to Amazon's Alexa Skills service via an interactive voice-based personal assistant.

Amazon Echo has a whole device family and hence comes in many flavors, all of which are discussed in the following sections.

Amazon Echo – First Generation

Amazon Echo was the original first generation flagship smart speaker from Amazon. It requires a wireless internet connection to work as its voice capability (Alexa) is based on a cloud computing service by Amazon:

Figure 2.1: A first...

Anatomy of an Alexa Skill

In this section, we will strive to understand what makes Alexa, the personal assistant bundled with Amazon Echo, so smart. The sole reason that Alexa can follow and understand a user's voice commands is because it has skills, and not just in a literal sense, but also in an actual sense.

An Alexa Skill is an actual piece of software code designed for a singular purpose; that is, to make Alexa accomplish a certain task. The following are some examples:

  • There is an Alexa Skill to order pizza from Domino's Pizza
  • There is an Alexa Skill to summon Uber
  • There is an Alexa Skill to order flowers
  • There is an Alexa Skill to listen to your horoscope

The number of skills available for Alexa has been steadily growing since 2016. As of early 2018, there are over 30,000 third-party skills available for Alexa in the US alone:

Figure 2.6: Growth...

Hello Alexa – Building a Hello World Alexa Skill

This section addresses the final goal of this chapter, that is, actually writing our first Alexa Skill. However, please note that we do have a few prerequisites before we embark on the final leg of our journey through this chapter. For the success of this exercise, each user will need to have an Amazon Developer account. Signing up for an Amazon Developer account is a simple and straightforward process. The user can sign up for an account at https://developer.amazon.com.

Signing up is a three-step process and includes providing personal information, accepting terms of service, and providing a payment method.

Please note that although signing up requires you to provide Amazon with a payment method, Amazon will charge you if, and only if, you end up using any of the paid services. However, over the course of this book...

Summary

Please give yourself a pat on the back if you made it this far, having created the Hello World Greeter skill. Successful completion of this exercise proves that you just leveled up from being a novice to a Padawan. We still have a lot of skills to design before you can formally call yourself an Alexa Skills Jedi but we are off to a good start.

We hope that you now understand the anatomy of a basic Alexa Skill and the jargon surrounding it, such as Lambdas, intents, and slots. Also, you should now be able to design simple skills yourself.

In the coming chapters, we will gradually move on to slightly more complicated skills, each with an increasing level of difficulty as we proceed through each of the chapters. For example, in the next chapter, we will create an Alexa Skill that will enable us to use Alexa as a messaging medium, and from there we will move on to design...

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Key benefits

  • • Gain hands-on experience of working with Amazon Echo and Alexa
  • • Build exciting IoT projects using Amazon Echo
  • • Learn about voice-enabled smart devices

Description

Amazon Echo is a smart speaker developed by Amazon, which connects to Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service and is entirely controlled by voice commands. Amazon Echo is currently being used for a variety of purposes such as home automation, asking generic queries, and even ordering a cab or pizza. Alexa Skills Projects starts with a basic introduction to Amazon Alexa and Echo. You will then deep dive into Alexa Programming concepts such as Intents, Slots, Lambdas and maintaining your skill’s state using DynamoDB. You will get a clear understanding of how some of the most popular Alexa Skills work, and gain experience of working with real-world Amazon Echo applications. In the concluding chapters, you will explore the future of voice-enabled applications and their coverage with respect to the Internet of Things. By the end of the book, you will have learned to design Alexa Skills for specific purposes and interact with Amazon Echo to execute these skills.

Who is this book for?

Alexa Skills Projects is for individuals who want to have a deep understanding of the underlying technology that drives Amazon Echo and Alexa, and how it can be integrated with the Internet of Things to develop hands-on projects.

What you will learn

  • • Understand how Amazon Echo is already being used in various domains
  • • Discover how an Alexa Skill is architected
  • • Get a clear understanding of how some of the most popular Alexa Skills work
  • • Design Alexa Skills for specific purposes and interact with Amazon Echo to execute them
  • • Gain experience of programming for Amazon Echo
  • • Explore future applications of Amazon Echo and other voice-activated devices
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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Jun 29, 2018
Length: 250 pages
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Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788997256
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Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788997256
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Table of Contents

8 Chapters
What is Alexa? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Hello World, Alexa! Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Hands-Free Experience with Alexa Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Let's Play Factly with Alexa Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Making Alexa Talk About CryptoCurrencies Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Home Automation with Alexa Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
The Future of Voice-Based Personal Assistants Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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1 star 0%
Axel Schultze Nov 18, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
It helps you get a general understanding of the Alexa system. While many people consider it an AI type solution, you will notice it is not really. The decision tree structure is still the old type "if - then - else" logic. In the beginning you are guided a bit back and forth but that is a typical Amazon AWS type documentation, neither intuitive nor very easy to use. The software product itself is updated so that the description is not quite matching the software. You need to figure things out yourself. If you are a good software developer you will get around quickly. If not, I would wait until things are more stable.
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