Wrote an Alexa-based receptionist app

Bought an Amazon Echo Dot last weekend and spent a few off hours working on an app. Got to show it off to my boss yesterday so that was cool.

"Alexa, ask Origin App for the wi-fi password."
"Alexa, ask Origin App to page Jeff."
"Alexa, open Origin App."
"Alexa, ask Origin App for another fact."

etc

Wrote the AWS Lambda function myself from scratch, as well as the Intents/Utterances/Slots for the Alexa Skill itself.

And this morning, I wired up an external power switch to the printer and have that working from Alexa. Although I've got the ASK/Lambda happy for the printer control/status, I now have to work up some sort of gateway to get it through the firewall so that Lambda can ultimately query/control the printer from inside my private IP space.

 

Oh yeah, and I wrote an SMS gateway so that the app could send text messages for that.

 

So now... I'm working on an octo-proxy in Node.js and a firewall-forward on the port. If authenticated, it will proxy to the printer from the Internet from that Lambda function. I'll then just rig the Lambda function to query the printer and Bob's-your-uncle.

Gonna run the proxy on a Raspi Pi Zero W here locally.

 

Sweet. I setup a new Raspberry Pi Zero W, dropped on the octo-proxy code I created, setup the Lambda function at Amazon, finished the J.A.R.V.I.S. (Alexa) skill and did an end-to-end test on that. It now accurately reports status back via Alexa's voice.

Comments from the proxy file itself explaining things...