So someone gave me an Amazon Echo the other day to play with. i played around with Ifttt.com and setup an integration with this project using Ifttt.com. The resulting plugin allows any event in Ifttt.com to be brought into the HomeAutomation controller and any HomeAutomation controller output to trigger events in the Ifttt.com engine. This worked great but forced the echo commands to look like

"alexa trigger living room tv on"

"alexa trigger kitchen lights on"

That word trigger rubbed me the wrong way and it turns out that ifttt.com requires that word. So i set out to find a new solution to the problem. Turns out you can create your own Echo apps so i did just that.

Using AWS Lambda i created the required OAuth connections and python code to register all of the devices on my home automation system with the Echo. It then uses HTTP get requests to send that information back to the home automation controller. End result is natural phrases like

"Alexa turn on the living room TV"

"Alexa turn the living room TV on"

etc.

Now i am working on voice response code that can be configured from the scripting engine.

So......

"Alexa is the living room TV on" would result in "Yes, the living room TV is on"

or

"Alexa is my front door locked" could result in "no, would you like me to lock the door?"

Cool stuff. Amazon now sells the Dot for $49, if you buy 10 you get 2 free.... think i might do just that and put them all over the house.

If you read this far and your interested in this project throw in a comment below and let me know what your looking for, or maybe what you would like to see the project do before you would consider installing it in your own home.