8 ms·

An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python

167 points by happy-go-lucky 8y ago

gnufied 8y ago
I own several Echo devices and programmability of Alexa devices just baffles me. There is still no way for a skill to read notifications. For example - I want to write a calendar notification app which unifies all calendar events across several sources and there is just no way to do it. It is of course disabled in the name of privacy which I can understand - but I don't understand how I can't enable this for a device that I own from an app I write. Similarly - I was considering getting an Echo Show for keeping a persistent view of my todo list and upcoming things on Echo show. I looked at writing skills for Echo show. Something that should be a webapp that just renders a particular source or something similar. But nope - It just looks hard or impossible.
- notyourwork 8y ago
  Can you use a mobile app as a conduit? Central server Alexa pushes to and polls from, mobile app similarly but has permissions for calendar to do actual work? I know it’s contrived but seems like a reasonable approach.
- fomojola 8y ago
  Question: are you trying to read Android notifications? Or perhaps read Alexa notifications? I would think you can pretty easily write a skill to feed you a unified calendar (you'd need to do the calendar unification on your own server, though).
- jon-wood 8y ago
  The Echo Show is a horrible disappointment. I got one when they were released in the UK because it seemed the perfect thing to keep in the kitchen, but it’s crippled beyond usefulness. My primary use case was going to be watching Netflix with voice control. Netflix has yet to appear on the Show, and because of Amazon’s zealot like insistence that everything be driven by a voice UI there’s no web browser or app support. The thing is clearly running some version of Android, I wish they’d just bite the bullet and throw FireOS proper on there.
  - daveguy 8y ago
    That is strange. Especially considering the original echo has a volume ring on the top for manual volume adjustment. I'm surprised the echo show is voice only and doesn't include a touchscreen. Thank you for the heads up.
    - jon-wood 8y ago
      To clarify the Echo Show does have a touch screen, but they may as well have not added it for all the use it provides.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  It really is too crippled. I wanted to have my various home devices send me notifications (e.g. "3D print finished successfully"), but Alexa just cannot do it. I didn't even want it to spontaneously start saying things, flashing the light until I said "what's up, Alexa?" or something would be great, but nope, nothing. I really hope Snips catches on, as it's much, much more hackable.
jihadjihad 8y ago
Definitely going to give this a try over the weekend. I bailed pretty quick a few months ago when I wanted to build a spelling bee skill for Alexa in Python. It was a total joke--terrible docs, cumbersome API and just simply not fun. Hoping this is a step in the right direction.
- mrsteveman1 8y ago
  Have to agree. Even the code examples for some of the skill types aren't examples of using the API, they're examples of things like migrating existing code to a newer version of the API, which means much of the code is not only hard to read but irrelevant. And the Smart Home skill APIs are very different from the normal skills, so most of the tutorials that are available don't help much. Lambda is required as a back-end for Smart Home skills, but must still be set up manually which means copying and pasting things back and forth between completely unrelated management interfaces, some on AWS, some on Amazon Developer Services. User authentication is required for Smart Home skills, but after checking the configuration very carefully and still seeing the auth step fail in the Alexa app even though the OAUTH calls succeeded, with little to no visibility into why it failed, I stopped wasting time on it.
th0ma5 8y ago
Would be nice if there was a VPN mechanism for Lambdas such I could securely connect to my home network from them... perhaps port knocking or the single-packet equivalent... I don't want to open my listener to the world when I already have a suitable UDP based thing going on with VPN....... EDIT: woops... maybe you can? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46329464/can-an-aws-lambda-function-make-a-post-to-a-endpoint-that-is-in-a-private-networ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46329464/can-an-aws-lamb...
- dm7 8y ago
  ngrok.com
  - th0ma5 8y ago
    that requires a fourth party involved
- fergyfresh 8y ago
  Use Flask-Ask and Zappa and deploy to AWS Lambda. I use that setup and have been running for free on AWS infra for about 6 months now.
  - th0ma5 8y ago
    oh i guess i didn't explain my use case enough... i'll deploy to lambda, but then i want lambda to ask about or control things around my house
    - ryall 8y ago
      Not sure if I understand what you're after, but AWS offers private API Gateway's now
      - th0ma5 8y ago
        Echo <-> Lambda <-> ?? <-> Home Network For ?? I've tried just making the lambda directly connect to an open port, but this requires me to open the router to quite a large range since lambdas don't have static IPs. I'd like a VPN in ?? I have that for my phone. As I dig into VPC and such it seems like it almost requires an EC2 endpoint for me to VPN into from my network which will NAT the request? I'd like to not have to pay for an EC2 instance.
chishaku 8y ago
Flask-ask makes it pretty easy. https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-ask https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-ask
- fergyfresh 8y ago
  I recently contributed to Flask-Ask and have been developing apps for Alexa for a while now. The APIs/Boilerplate code for the `easier way` is definitely harder than Flask-Ask is right now.
- bb88 8y ago
  Also flask-assistant is the google assistant version which (IIRC) was inspired by flask-ask. https://flask-assistant.readthedocs.io/en/latest/quick_start.html#installation https://flask-assistant.readthedocs.io/en/latest/quick_start...
- saamm 8y ago
  Yes! I recently adapted a project of mine to be available as an Alexa skill, and it only took ~40 lines to get it working [0]. 0: https://github.com/ssaamm/pun-generator/compare/24188aceb3daf8c62ae0e0f3cde35d4cb06ea69b...ssaamm:e7490906175613065832686cc4240d84ae19a801 https://github.com/ssaamm/pun-generator/compare/24188aceb3da...
- mullen 8y ago
  Played with this. It is stupid easy to make apps for Alexa with Flask-Ask.
- johnwheeler 8y ago
  Thanks!
- charred_toast 8y ago
  I agree, I've used this package since the beginning. Python is my favorite computer language so far. I started with Flash, then HTML & CSS, then jQuery, PHP, MySQL, etc. Could not mention Python without Virtualenv, Django, and Flask. To me, these tools are like LEGO for programming. I like JS too, who wouldn't? People literally live on the internet.
newsbinator 8y ago
After banging my head trying to get access to start using Amazon's product advertising APIs and product matching info APIs, I'd like to politely say: screw Amazon. If you keep slapping away developers on one end, then don't expect us to get excited about building things for your products on the other end.
oulipo 8y ago
If you care about your privacy, you can also build your own 100% on-device Voice AI for free using https://snips.ai https://snips.ai (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder) We are building an open-source and 100% private-by-design Voice AI platform, and you can code your first private assistant in less than 1h: https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home-sound-system-using-snips-and-sonos-2aaf16523ce9 https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home...
- kingbirdy 8y ago
  The platform looks interesting, but the fact that you're offering an ICO makes me immediately wary of your company.
  - miketery 8y ago
    Agreed. The true crypto use case - raising money without consequences. A shitty use case, but one none the less.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    I tried Snips for a bit the other day on my Raspi 3, and it worked as advertised, detection was great, making skills was simple, and it's much better than Alexa in that you don't have to say "tell <app> to <command>", the entire namespace is immediately available. It's all that I've wanted from such a device. I do agree, however, that the ICO makes the whole thing feel scammy. It's a terrible idea, I guess they got lured in by the promise of free money and shoehorned a token into their app.
- dr01d 8y ago
  gah, what the heck is wrong with that woman's head on the homepage. Nightmare fuel.
  - archgoon 8y ago
    That is... bizarre. It looks like they had a simple head originally and then attached it to a too large body (facing the wrong way), and then tossed some hair on it to not look like it was a sockless handpuppet coming out of the neck
hallman76 8y ago
oof. Their getting started doc[0] has you create a virtualenv called "skill" then asks you to create your project in a folder called "skill". I can't imagine the confusion that's going to ensue. [0] https://github.com/alexa-labs/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-python/blob/master/docs/GETTING_STARTED.rst https://github.com/alexa-labs/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-pytho...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

I own several Echo devices and programmability of Alexa devices just baffles me. There is still no way for a skill to read notifications. For example - I want to write a calendar notification app which unifies all calendar events across several sources and there is just no way to do it. It is of course disabled in the name of privacy which I can understand - but I don't understand how I can't enable this for a device that I own from an app I write. Similarly - I was considering getting an Echo Show for keeping a persistent view of my todo list and upcoming things on Echo show. I looked at writing skills for Echo show. Something that should be a webapp that just renders a particular source or something similar. But nope - It just looks hard or impossible.

notyourwork 8y ago
Can you use a mobile app as a conduit? Central server Alexa pushes to and polls from, mobile app similarly but has permissions for calendar to do actual work? I know it’s contrived but seems like a reasonable approach.
fomojola 8y ago
Question: are you trying to read Android notifications? Or perhaps read Alexa notifications? I would think you can pretty easily write a skill to feed you a unified calendar (you'd need to do the calendar unification on your own server, though).
jon-wood 8y ago
The Echo Show is a horrible disappointment. I got one when they were released in the UK because it seemed the perfect thing to keep in the kitchen, but it’s crippled beyond usefulness. My primary use case was going to be watching Netflix with voice control. Netflix has yet to appear on the Show, and because of Amazon’s zealot like insistence that everything be driven by a voice UI there’s no web browser or app support. The thing is clearly running some version of Android, I wish they’d just bite the bullet and throw FireOS proper on there.
- daveguy 8y ago
  That is strange. Especially considering the original echo has a volume ring on the top for manual volume adjustment. I'm surprised the echo show is voice only and doesn't include a touchscreen. Thank you for the heads up.
  - jon-wood 8y ago
    To clarify the Echo Show does have a touch screen, but they may as well have not added it for all the use it provides.
StavrosK 8y ago
It really is too crippled. I wanted to have my various home devices send me notifications (e.g. "3D print finished successfully"), but Alexa just cannot do it. I didn't even want it to spontaneously start saying things, flashing the light until I said "what's up, Alexa?" or something would be great, but nope, nothing. I really hope Snips catches on, as it's much, much more hackable.

jihadjihad 8y ago

Definitely going to give this a try over the weekend. I bailed pretty quick a few months ago when I wanted to build a spelling bee skill for Alexa in Python. It was a total joke--terrible docs, cumbersome API and just simply not fun. Hoping this is a step in the right direction.

mrsteveman1 8y ago
Have to agree. Even the code examples for some of the skill types aren't examples of using the API, they're examples of things like migrating existing code to a newer version of the API, which means much of the code is not only hard to read but irrelevant. And the Smart Home skill APIs are very different from the normal skills, so most of the tutorials that are available don't help much. Lambda is required as a back-end for Smart Home skills, but must still be set up manually which means copying and pasting things back and forth between completely unrelated management interfaces, some on AWS, some on Amazon Developer Services. User authentication is required for Smart Home skills, but after checking the configuration very carefully and still seeing the auth step fail in the Alexa app even though the OAUTH calls succeeded, with little to no visibility into why it failed, I stopped wasting time on it.

th0ma5 8y ago

Would be nice if there was a VPN mechanism for Lambdas such I could securely connect to my home network from them... perhaps port knocking or the single-packet equivalent... I don't want to open my listener to the world when I already have a suitable UDP based thing going on with VPN....... EDIT: woops... maybe you can? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46329464/can-an-aws-lambda-function-make-a-post-to-a-endpoint-that-is-in-a-private-networ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46329464/can-an-aws-lamb...

dm7 8y ago
ngrok.com
- th0ma5 8y ago
  that requires a fourth party involved
fergyfresh 8y ago
Use Flask-Ask and Zappa and deploy to AWS Lambda. I use that setup and have been running for free on AWS infra for about 6 months now.
- th0ma5 8y ago
  oh i guess i didn't explain my use case enough... i'll deploy to lambda, but then i want lambda to ask about or control things around my house
  - ryall 8y ago
    Not sure if I understand what you're after, but AWS offers private API Gateway's now
    - th0ma5 8y ago
      Echo <-> Lambda <-> ?? <-> Home Network For ?? I've tried just making the lambda directly connect to an open port, but this requires me to open the router to quite a large range since lambdas don't have static IPs. I'd like a VPN in ?? I have that for my phone. As I dig into VPC and such it seems like it almost requires an EC2 endpoint for me to VPN into from my network which will NAT the request? I'd like to not have to pay for an EC2 instance.

chishaku 8y ago

Flask-ask makes it pretty easy. https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-ask https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-ask

fergyfresh 8y ago
I recently contributed to Flask-Ask and have been developing apps for Alexa for a while now. The APIs/Boilerplate code for the `easier way` is definitely harder than Flask-Ask is right now.
bb88 8y ago
Also flask-assistant is the google assistant version which (IIRC) was inspired by flask-ask. https://flask-assistant.readthedocs.io/en/latest/quick_start.html#installation https://flask-assistant.readthedocs.io/en/latest/quick_start...
saamm 8y ago
Yes! I recently adapted a project of mine to be available as an Alexa skill, and it only took ~40 lines to get it working [0]. 0: https://github.com/ssaamm/pun-generator/compare/24188aceb3daf8c62ae0e0f3cde35d4cb06ea69b...ssaamm:e7490906175613065832686cc4240d84ae19a801 https://github.com/ssaamm/pun-generator/compare/24188aceb3da...
mullen 8y ago
Played with this. It is stupid easy to make apps for Alexa with Flask-Ask.
johnwheeler 8y ago
Thanks!
charred_toast 8y ago
I agree, I've used this package since the beginning. Python is my favorite computer language so far. I started with Flash, then HTML & CSS, then jQuery, PHP, MySQL, etc. Could not mention Python without Virtualenv, Django, and Flask. To me, these tools are like LEGO for programming. I like JS too, who wouldn't? People literally live on the internet.

newsbinator 8y ago

After banging my head trying to get access to start using Amazon's product advertising APIs and product matching info APIs, I'd like to politely say: screw Amazon. If you keep slapping away developers on one end, then don't expect us to get excited about building things for your products on the other end.

oulipo 8y ago

If you care about your privacy, you can also build your own 100% on-device Voice AI for free using https://snips.ai https://snips.ai (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder) We are building an open-source and 100% private-by-design Voice AI platform, and you can code your first private assistant in less than 1h: https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home-sound-system-using-snips-and-sonos-2aaf16523ce9 https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home...

kingbirdy 8y ago
The platform looks interesting, but the fact that you're offering an ICO makes me immediately wary of your company.
- miketery 8y ago
  Agreed. The true crypto use case - raising money without consequences. A shitty use case, but one none the less.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  I tried Snips for a bit the other day on my Raspi 3, and it worked as advertised, detection was great, making skills was simple, and it's much better than Alexa in that you don't have to say "tell <app> to <command>", the entire namespace is immediately available. It's all that I've wanted from such a device. I do agree, however, that the ICO makes the whole thing feel scammy. It's a terrible idea, I guess they got lured in by the promise of free money and shoehorned a token into their app.
dr01d 8y ago
gah, what the heck is wrong with that woman's head on the homepage. Nightmare fuel.
- archgoon 8y ago
  That is... bizarre. It looks like they had a simple head originally and then attached it to a too large body (facing the wrong way), and then tossed some hair on it to not look like it was a sockless handpuppet coming out of the neck

hallman76 8y ago

oof. Their getting started doc[0] has you create a virtualenv called "skill" then asks you to create your project in a folder called "skill". I can't imagine the confusion that's going to ensue. [0] https://github.com/alexa-labs/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-python/blob/master/docs/GETTING_STARTED.rst https://github.com/alexa-labs/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-pytho...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]