Alexa enabled smart home programming with Python
Sonal Raj (~sonal) |
Description:
We have a word for it now - Domotics. The fun started a year back when I laid hands on this beautiful device from Amazon, which could not only manage your music, reminders, lists but also make calls and send messages. Basically, a smart phone in the cloud to be used without hands. But a developer sees endless possibilities with this powerful tool. Although speech recognition technology itself is nothing new, Amazon Echo has made its way to the homes of regular consumers.
This talk is specially focused on giving a head start to the attendees about building and using powerful applications in python for use with an Alexa device. Being a python developer for the past 10 years and working on alexa skills for the past year, I intend to share my experience with the python community and enthusiasts.
Broadly, this talk will be covering the following topics:
- How the echo framework and Alexa skills work
- An introduction to creating alexa skills in python with
flask-ask - Handling requests, responses, contexts and sessions.
- Testing applications with
ngrokand deploying to the cloud. - A sneek peek into other home automation possibilities like
micropythonembedding with popular microprocessors.
The talk would be illustration and example driven and will include demos of cool app(s) I have been working on.
Prerequisites:
This talk is intended for developers who have a decent grasp on the basics of the python framework and trends, although you do not need knowledge of any specific packages or libraries. Just an enthusiastic mind is enough! The primary takeaway of this talk would be learning how to get started ideating and building applications for an alexa enabled smart home device and discuss some cool developer tips.
Speaker Info:
Sonal Raj (@_sonalraj) has been an avid pythonista for 10 years. He has been working as an integral part of the financial technology industry for the past 4 years. Sonal holds a masters in Information Technology and has been a research fellow at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His domains of interest include distributed systems and graph databases, and he loves to explore new gadgets and develop new technology. He is also the author of the best selling book 'Neo4j High Performance'.