Amazon Alexa Home Automation Skills

Amazon Alexa
Home Automation Skills
Presented by
Jeremy Proffitt

What are Home Automation Skills?
Unlike a custom skill, Home Automation Skills have a standard command structure
designed to operate items in the home like lights, power outlets, locks and
thermostats. Recently, Version 3 added multimedia controls, including channels,
volume, media and input controls.
Examples:
Alexa, Fireplace off.
Alexa, make living room blue.
Alexa, Lock front door.
Alexa, What is the temperature of my house?

What is required to build an Home Automation Skill?
● AWS Skill Linking to:
○ AWS Lambda written in Python, Node JS, C# or Java.
○ oAuth user access management supporting access tokens.
● Something to control “the something”.
● Cloud based transport layer to bridge the Lambda with the something.
Note: All communications to and from the Lambda function are in JSON.

Account Linking - oAuth Access Token
RequirementsIn order to identify which devices belong to you, Home Automation Skills require
you to link you Amazon Alexa account with your specific device cloud using oAuth
Access Tokens. This access token is then presented to the lambda when it is
called to uniquely identify the user’s devices.
You can build your own oAuth system, or use a freely available alternative like
“Login with Amazon.” For our example today, we will be using the oAuth built into
Particle.IO’s cloud.

Certification - The Who’s Complaining Now Dept.
1. The skill's [Privacy Policy and Terms of Use] page is not displayed when opened in the Alexa companion app on a mobile device. When these links are selected, the URL you’ve specified in the
developer portal must be displayed and cannot redirect to another site.
Please note that the privacy policy and the terms of use link provided by you on the skill detail page navigates to a GitHub profile. Please provide relevant privacy policy and the terms of use.
2. Your skill improperly uses Amazon brands or trademarks. For permitted uses of certain Amazon brands and trademarks in connection with the distribution of your skill through our Program,
please consult our Trademark Guidelines, found here:
Please update your Skill's Title to remove the improperly used Amazon brand or trademark and resubmit your Skill for reconsideration.
3. The description displayed in the skill’s detail card must contain accurate information so users are well informed on how to use the skill.
Please note that the skill description provided by you doesn't inform the user about the core functionality of the skill. It must tell user what the skill does and few example utterances for the user
to get started with the skill. Please provide proper skill description.

The Flow for Device Discovery
The User Invokes Discover Devices
through the Alexa App or by says,
“Alexa, Discover Devices”
Lambda is sent Discover Devices Request
which includes the access token
Lambda retrieves a list of physical devices
from the Particle.IO cloud
Lambda checks all physical devices for
home automation devices and capabilities
of those devices.
The Lambda returns the complete list of all
home automation devices and their
capabilities from all the physical devices.
This response is in JSON.

The Flow for Device Usage
“Alexa, Turn Fan On”
Amazon calls the Lambda with the
access token and unique home
automation device identifier
The Lambda calls the Particle.IO
Cloud and sending the command.
The Particle.IO Cloud, contacts the
physical device, sending it the
command and returning any
requested information.
The Lambda returns the
information to the Echo System.
The Particle.IO Cloud returns the
information to the Lambda.
The Echo either responds “OK” or
provides the requested information
like lock state or temperature.

The Downfall of a Lambda Based System
● You are locked into paying Amazon for every time a customer uses their
device, this means building in the application cost into the initial device price
or moving to a subscription based plan.
● Amazon charges by the 100ms for lambda usage, so the longer your code,
and the communication with your devices take, the more it will cost.
● Communication timeout with the world outside your Lambda need to be short
○ If the Lambda times out while doing a device discovery, no devices will be discovered.
○ If the Lambda times out while communicating with your device, the device may not get the
command, or the user may have a bad user experience of the device working but Alexa saying
it’s not.

Introduction to the Particle.IO Photon
Based on Cypress's WICED architecture, the Particle
Photon Series combines a powerful STM32 ARM Cortex
M3 microcontroller and a Cypress Wi-Fi chip. This keeps
the footprint small but the function broad. The Particle
has a brother too, the Cellular based Electron.
The Photon is paired to wifi using a very simple
smartphone application and has both a command line
control system and a very powerful web based
development and debugging platform. With Arduino
compatibility, most Arduino libraries can be used with the
Photon with little or no change.
The most powerful feature of the Particle.IO devices is it’s
powerful built in cloud system.

Particle.IO IDE
The online particle.io IDE allows for
both writing of the software and
programming of the device over the
internet.
Libraries can be published online which
allows for easy click and add
integration, manage multiple devices
and even group multiple devices into a
project for easy group control.
Debugging is easy with endpoint
interface control and publishing
functions allowing for powerful
integration with external endpoints.

Particle IO Photon Code Sample - Lights On / Off
From: https://github.com/JeremyProffitt/EchoPhotonBridge
#include <EchoPhotonBridge.h>
EchoPhotonBridge epb;
//function OnOff - this turns a device on or off
int functionOnOff(int device, bool onOff, String rawParameters)
{
digitalWrite(D7, (onOff) ? HIGH : LOW);
}
// REMINDER: Tell your echo, "Alexa, Discover Devices" after you program your photon so Amazon picks it up.
void setup()
{
pinMode(D7, OUTPUT);
epb.addEchoDeviceV2OnOff("Photon Light", &functionOnOff);
}
void loop()
{
}

What’s Next?
Hands On Demonstration
&
Questions

Amazon Alexa Home Automation Skills

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