Book Image

Alexa Skills Projects

By : Madhur Bhargava
Book Image

Alexa Skills Projects

By: Madhur Bhargava

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Developing the Mobile App


We will be creating an Android app that will communicate with the ambient sensor over BLE.

If you do not know much about developing Android apps and BLE, don't worry, you can simply download the source code from the link provided toward the end of this section. Alternatively, you can check out the Android Developer website regarding the development of Android apps.

Note

If you are interested in exploring Android, navigate to https://developer.android.com/ to find more information on Android app development.

The following are the prerequisites for this section:

  • Android:
    • Latest Android Studio
    • An up-to-date Android device (preferably a Samsung Galaxy S8, since it has support for Bluetooth 5, otherwise any device with an API Level of 23 (Android M) is fine)
    • Basic familiarity with Java, Android, Android Studio, and BLE
  • Hardware:
    • Texas Instruments CC2650 STK SensorTag

We'll begin by creating an empty project. Please choose a name for it.

For the purpose of consistency, and since...