Alexa to the help

I wanted to help my daughter with the maths multiplication tables, but it gets painful when you repeat it again & again :(
I was thinking of creating something with Bot Framework or Cortana skills, but those does not seems to be fit for purpose due to my previous experiences.
Then comes Amazon Echo, and Alexa seems more promising.


Decided to create an Alexa skill so that daughter can invoke it and ask for the maths table by herself.

First thing we need is Amazon Alexa skill developer account.
Head to below url & register for your account.

https://developer.amazon.com/

Once registered, we can create a new Alexa skill.
Creating skill is a step by step process.

1. Skill Information

In skill info, we need to select Languages to support. Also the Name & Invocation Name for the skill.


2. Interaction Model

Next is the Interaction model. Here we have to configure our intent & sample utterances.
These are the sentences which we are suppose to speak to Alexa.
And finally we need to Save & Build Model.


3. Configuration

We got the interaction model, but now we need to process the request & provide the output to Alexa.
I choose AWS Lambda function for this. Biggest advantage is that I don't need any server to host it.
If you don't have AWS account, follow the below link & create a account for yourself.

https://aws.amazon.com/

Try creating a new Lambda Function, you can use a existing Alexa code template like "How-To".
In the function, we have hookup the intent which we created in the Interaction Model.
Just process the received number & emit the text which Alexa will speak.


After creating the lambda function, we will need to attach the function to the Alexa skill.
In the configuration section, we will need to put the service endpoint & it will be our lambda function url.


4. Test

Everything is hooked up so now time to test. Amazon provides good set of tools for testing the alexa skills.
Best one is the service simulator available in Test section.
Here we have to put in sample utterance & it will provide the response.
You can listen to the response as well. It will also show the skill card.




Test With Echo

Done with the coding now, time to test on the actual device.
We can check our developered alexa skills on the Amazon Alexa app. Just have a look if its enabled.


Talk to Alexa, provide the utterances and check if everything works.

My daughter is enjoying the experience of asking Alexa for the tables now giving me some free time to explore something else :)
Also I am keeping track of what she learnt with the Alexa app, by checking the recent skill cards. :)



Happy Coding!!!
Parshuram


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