Introduction
I've been experimenting with the Amazon Alexa personal assistant platform, and it seems reasonably interesting, especially as third-party companies start to implement their own skills. As a side project, I put together an app that can tap into the service for mobile and TV, but I've found it's very effective on a TV and much less so on a mobile device. The nVidia Shield TV's remotes seem to have enough microphone coverage to make the voice commands function from across a room, and you can leave the remotes plugged in so battery doesn't drain on them while you're using them as a voice control.
This is in NO way an official app from Amazon.
There's an option for always-on listening, but you really will want to have your remote plugged in for that, and you might want to disable it when you watch movies, occasionally it'll trigger in the middle of a Netflix binge. Basically it's not perfect, but I'm looking for feedback on refining the app!
More Details
You can read the whole write up on the project here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazon-alexa-always-on-assistant-will-blaschko-ma
You can download it for mobile here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.willblaschko.android.alexalistens
The app has been approved for Android TV, you can find it by searching the Google Play app on your TV for "Alexa Listens"
Features
Currently the library I wrote for this doesn't support more recent feature additions like timers and scheduling, but it'll do all the basic voice commands/questions/skill triggers. It'll probably even order Domino's Pizza or call an Uber if you have those skills enabled. Since I don't have any eligible home automation, IoT hardware, I don't know if it'll control those... maybe? Feedback welcome, critique welcome, mostly I just wanted to offer it up if people wanted a chance to try the platform.
Edits
5/15/2016: New APK: add support for devices w/o microphones--ability to type Alexa command via Settings toggle.
I've been experimenting with the Amazon Alexa personal assistant platform, and it seems reasonably interesting, especially as third-party companies start to implement their own skills. As a side project, I put together an app that can tap into the service for mobile and TV, but I've found it's very effective on a TV and much less so on a mobile device. The nVidia Shield TV's remotes seem to have enough microphone coverage to make the voice commands function from across a room, and you can leave the remotes plugged in so battery doesn't drain on them while you're using them as a voice control.
This is in NO way an official app from Amazon.
There's an option for always-on listening, but you really will want to have your remote plugged in for that, and you might want to disable it when you watch movies, occasionally it'll trigger in the middle of a Netflix binge. Basically it's not perfect, but I'm looking for feedback on refining the app!
More Details
You can read the whole write up on the project here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazon-alexa-always-on-assistant-will-blaschko-ma
You can download it for mobile here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.willblaschko.android.alexalistens
The app has been approved for Android TV, you can find it by searching the Google Play app on your TV for "Alexa Listens"
Features
Currently the library I wrote for this doesn't support more recent feature additions like timers and scheduling, but it'll do all the basic voice commands/questions/skill triggers. It'll probably even order Domino's Pizza or call an Uber if you have those skills enabled. Since I don't have any eligible home automation, IoT hardware, I don't know if it'll control those... maybe? Feedback welcome, critique welcome, mostly I just wanted to offer it up if people wanted a chance to try the platform.
Edits
5/15/2016: New APK: add support for devices w/o microphones--ability to type Alexa command via Settings toggle.
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