This project is to automate some parts of my hacking space. The initial goal is to have the compressor and shop lights respond to voice commands.
The Amazon Echo or 'Alexa' externalizes all of the natural language processing to a city in the clouds, or 'the cloud.' The API is fairly straight forward and the Amazon tutorials are very thorough but there are a bazillion steps and the set-up it takes ages. After all that though it just seems to work, which is cool.