Alexa and ecobee are at the forefront of voice user interface (VUI) design. We spoke with Tarun Tuli, director of embedded systems at ecobee, to learn how he and his team are approaching product development with voice control as the primary user interface.

Simplicity is at the core of all Hive devices, which made integration with Alexa a natural next step, says Elvin Nagamootoo, Hive product lead. Using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), the Hive team built a smart home skill and a custom skill.

The 60dB team wants to reach listeners where they are. That’s why the Amazon Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices were the next logical step for 60dB—even before porting the app to other mobile platforms.

Mylestone is a company that transforms memories into unique, audible stories. And its Alexa skills helps customers relive their most precious moments at any time, right on their device with Alexa.

DineTime built a skill to enable customers to say, “Alexa, tell DineTime to add my name to the waitlist” before they head out the door. That way, they get the waiting out of the way while they’re en route to the restaurant.

Back in January, Alexa shared the keynote stage with two leaders form Acumatica, a leading innovator of cloud ERP and CRM solutions, at the Acumatica Summit 2017.  Together, they showed Alexa clearly has a head for business. 

In the 12 months since Invoxia launched Triby, its voice-controlled speaker and communications device with Alexa, the company has learned how to further optimize its flagship device to complement family life with new IoT and smart home features. Invoxia will launch the new Triby IO this summer.

We all have dirty laundry, but few of us enjoy dealing with it. So the founders of Laundrapp set out to take the work out of laundry. They created an app to enable UK consumers to offload their dirty laundry to Laundrapp. Then they added Alexa to make laundry faster, easier, and hands-free.

When fans of University of California, Irvine’s Anteaters want the latest news on their team, they simply ask Alexa. UCI’s Alexa skill delivers game results, team updates, and special announcements whenever fans ask.

Sixteen-year-old Austin Wilson loves building things. He enjoys figuring out how things are put together then finding ways to improve on them.

When Austin’s uncle noticed the teen’s knack for problem solving, he urged Austin to learn to code. That was five years ago, and the high school junior from Rocky River, Ohio has learned a number of programming languages since.

Last summer, Austin interned at a software company where he added C# and ASP.NET to the list. As his next step, he wanted to add artificial intelligence to his Raspberry Pi (RPi). A Google search led Austin to Hackster’s Internet of Voice Challenge (IoV) with Raspberry Pi where he discovered Alexa.

When the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) launched in late 2015, developers began building engaging experiences for voice, ranging from simple to innovative. Today, an interdisciplinary team of students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) is pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve. Meet Audrey Higgins (writer), Mohammed Tauseef (AWS and Unity integration), Na-Yeon Kim (2D/3D artist), Longyi Cheng (Unity Gameplay programmer), and Shuang You (3D artist).

Their class assignment: build a prototype, in two weeks, of a fully immersive virtual world. Specifically, the team created A.L.Ex.A. (The Assistant Linked Extemporization Array), a VR experience that follows a talkative repair drone destined to help users (or “guests” as they’re known in the VR world) stranded on remote system Planet 532.

Technology in the car keeps drivers informed and connected. Logitech, a global leader in personal computing and accessories, is using voice control and the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) to help drivers stay focused on the road.

The company built ZeroTouch, a product that enables drivers to use their voice to control mobile-based applications on their Android phones or access cloud-based services via Amazon Alexa.

ZeroTouch is a combination of hardware and software that creates a hands-free voice experience in any car. The magnetic hardware car mount holds a phone in place either on the car dash or an air vent. The ZeroTouch mobile application launches via BluetoothⓇ and its voice control feature is activated with the wave of a hand.

Click the link below to read more about the development process. 

In 2012, brothers Maurice and Marcel Eisterhues built a smartphone app for their father. TorAlarm—German for GoalAlert—had a simple purpose: to help dad keep up with the scores for his favorite football teams. (That’s soccer for readers in the USA.)

What started as a fun project turned into a true opportunity for the two German entrepreneurs. TorAlarm’s popularity grew steadily, until in 2014, the brothers and their father founded a company with the same name. Today, TorAlarm is among Germany’s most popular apps for tracking the scores and schedules of football matches across the country,with over a million users in Germany alone.

Maurice and Marcel knew instantly voice would be the next step in TorAlarm’s evolution when they saw the upcoming launch of Amazon Echo in Germany.

“We were both totally amazed when we first saw the Amazon Echo,” says Maurice. “We’re always interested in new technology, so we decided very quickly we wanted to be part of this launch.”

A few months ago we introduced Flask-Ask, a new Python framework for rapid Alexa skill development created by Alexa Champion John Wheeler. Today, due to popular demand, John shares how you can deploy your Alexa skills built with Flask-Ask to AWS Lambda, a service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers, which you can use to build serverless applications. Check out John’s technical tutorial below, connect with him on Twitter, and hear more about Flask-Ask in the Alexa Dev Chat podcast episode 10.

In our first post, Flask-Ask and ngrok were used to rapidly create a memory game skill and test it locally. This post shows how to use Flask-Ask with the Zappa framework to quickly deploy skills to AWS Lambda. As of this writing, AWS Lambda supports Python 2.7. This tutorial assumes Python 2.7 is installed on your Windows, Mac, or Linux system.

Zappa, a serverless Python framework, uses a combination of AWS components to emulate the WSGI environment on Lambda that Python web frameworks require. Since Flask-Ask is a Flask extension and Flask requires a WSGI environment, Zappa is the perfect fit for deploying Flask-Ask skills to AWS Lambda. To demonstrate, we'll create an Alexa skill that uses the GitHub API to return how many stars, watchers, and forks a repository has.

Let's get started!

Andy Huntwork has worked at Amazon for over 10 years, the last three as a principal engineer. He’s developed front-end and backend services for technologies ranging from websites to payment systems and everything in between. But when the Amazon Echo came out in 2015, he saw a new doorway open. Alexa was an exciting way to bring voice-based experiences to the world, and Andy wanted to part of it.

“So I joined the Alexa team,” Andy says, “and immediately started playing around with the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK).” Only a few months after Amazon released ASK, Andy and his wife, Laura, created their first skill. The skill recited public domain works, like Abraham Lincoln’s speeches and The Jungle Book, but the Huntworks wanted to build something more interactive and engaging.

Laura recalls wondering, “What would you ask Alexa to open that’s exciting, even magical? Wouldn’t it be fun to open a magic door?”

From that simple idea grew The Magic Door, an adventure with Alexa guiding you through a growing number of original, interactive stories. Today, The Magic Door skill is a sophisticated adventure framework, hosting 10 adventure storylines, 30,000 spoken words, numerous character voices and hundreds of sounds effects.

Walking through the Magic Door

To enter a faraway land of magical creatures, perplexing riddles and hidden prizes, just say Alexa, open The Magic Door. Suddenly, you’re off on an adventure with Alexa as your personal guide.