What if you’re eating and having a discussion about a certain topic? Searching on your phone for an answer to a question would mean that your food gets cold. Or what if you’re lying on the couch without your phone and want to control the lights? Welcome Alexa, your new personal assistant. Alexa is a voice service that will respond to your questions and execute tasks. You can, for instance, ask Alexa about the weather or ask her to play a certain radio station. This presentation shows you how to create your own Alexa device. The setup uses a Raspberry Pi, a microphone, a speaker, and a Java application. You’ll learn how to integrate Alexa into your home automation setup so you can control your lights and everything else with your voice.

1. WELCOME ALEXA, YOUR
PERSONAL ASSISTANT
[CON1700]
J O H A N J A N S S E N , I N F O S U P P O R T
@ J O H A N J A N S S E N 4 2

2. CONTENT
• Internet of Things
• Home automation
• Alexa
• openHAB
• Alexa skills
• Conclusion
• Questions

4. What’s The Internet of Things (IoT)

8. “The Infrastructure of the Information Society”
Global Standards Initiative on Internet of Things (IoT-GSI)

9. What’s home automation?

11. What other things do we want to control?

12. DEMO TIME!

13. “A subset of IoT”
Joint Organisation for Herculean Alternative Networking (Johan)

14. Home automation challenges

22. DEMO TIME!

25. RASPBERRY PI
Official guide from Amazon
https://github.com/amzn/alexa-avs-raspberry-pi

26. DEMO TIME!

27. COMPARISON
ECHO
• $180
• Adapter
• Dual band wifi
• Mono speaker
• Wake on
speaking
TAP
• $115
• Rechargable
battery
• Single band wifi
• Stereo
• Wake on button
ECHO DOT
• $90
• Adapter
• Dual band wifi
• Stereo (weak)
• Wake on
speaking

28. COMPARISON
RASPBERRY PI
• Around $80-$90
• Raspberry Pi 3
• Speaker
• Microphone
• Power adapter
• Cables
ECHO DOT
• $90
• Adapter
• Dual band wifi
• Stereo (weak)
• Wake on
speaking
ECHO DOT 2
• $50
• Adapter
• Dual band wifi
• Stereo (weak)
• Wake on
speaking

35. Alexa for home automation

36. DEMO TIME!

37. OPENHAB

38. OPENHAB DASHBOARD

39. OPENHAB FUNCTIONALITY

46. DEMO TIME!

48. •Retrieve information
•Control devices
•Call webservice
•Order pizza!

49. TWO TYPE OF SKILLS
•Custom skill
•Smart home skill

50. DEPLOYING/RUNNING SKILLS
•AWS Lambda
–Java
–Node.js
–Python
•(Local) webservice

52. DEMO TIME!

53. ALEXA-HA SKILL

54. Disadvantages Alexa

62. Advantages Alexa

67. CONCLUSION
• Requires some work
• Easy to integrate with other devices / software
• Easy to program new features in Java
• You quickly get used to it
• Fun!

68. Johan Janssen, Info Support
@johanjanssen42