# sam9s Raspberry Pi Project! powered by Amazon Echo, A.K.A Alexa.



## sam9s (Sep 20, 2016)

Hi Friends,

Sharing with you another Project that I did on Raspberry Pi this weekend, don't worry, this time, I am not going to write a long guide that most of you find intimidating. , but would just share what I did this time with Rpi. Ofcourse those who are interested can anytime ask post any query and I can share what all I did or which tutorial I followed.

For people who do not know, Amazon Echo is a hands-free voice AI service, something like Siri or Google Now, you control with your voice. Echo connects to the Alexa Voice Service to play music, provide information, news, sports scores, weather, and more—instantly. I google it for more info to see what exactly it is. This lead me to an awesome discovery, with Amazon providing the Echo services and APIs, _developers have actually ported the entire thing on Rpi_..  The main developer behind this is a person named *Sam Machin*.  You can read everything about his  project here *The $10 Echo | sammachin.com*

There are loads of forks of his projects with people porting ECHO on their Rpi and loads of you tube tutorials as to how to do it. *I followed one and below is the video of what I was able to achieve.* 

*Amazon ECHO on Raspberry Pi*

Echo on Rpi2 - YouTub


So you see, pretty cool. This however is limited in functionality as quite a few services and features are dependent on Amazon ECHO app on mobile, specially the music control, which is what I think most of the people might use Alexa for. I was not able to even side load the app, it installs but just does not open. (Will do more RnD on it later). But general questions of GK and other things works, like timer worked perfectly. I tried for 30 sec and surely I was able to hear the audio cue after 30 sec. I was also able set alarm, since the internal clock was US, it wasnt usable (still need to see how and if we can change the internal server clock), but timer, as I said worked. Also adding products to a shopping list also worked, BUT since you can only edit the list via amazon app (not sure if we can do it on amazon portal), once the product is added, you cannot remove it.. . I was also able to link my Alexa profile to IFTTT and create a recipe as well, wherein whenever I add a product to my shopping list, it would mail it to me..  worked perfectly. 

I might not use it often, but I see my kid excited and trying different questions in English. Like height of Everest or capital of USA.. . This might improve his spoken English and also act as a google knowledge base

So this one was my another Rpi weekend project. As I said in my video, I will try the button approach as well, which if successful I will actually pack it in a box, for my kid to use it. I also will see if I am able to find something that also actually makes ALEXA on Rpi auto voice activated. That would really make it an actual project worth keeping 

Any questions, most welcome .. 

Regards
Sammy


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