Alexa's Photon Smart Home

Alexa's Fun House

Inspiration

Over the years, smart technology has been becoming an increasingly common commodity. People around the world have been able to utilize the advancement in technology to make the world a better place. An example of this includes the idea of "smart buildings". It was not long ago that a future where the world is automated and robots are everywhere was only an imagination, but now machines, sensors, and mobile devices are found everywhere. Given the opportunity to work with the innovative Amazon Echo and other amazing hardware, our group decided to try to connect multiple modular devices via Wi-Fi.

What it does

Our project uses the Amazon Echo and the Photon Board. Both devices are connected over the same Wi-Fi. The Amazon Echo accesses the Photon and calls its functions which returns data that has been measured over time through sensors and also allows you to control the ports throughout the board.

How we built it

The four of us split into 2 groups. One group was in charge of writing the software side that would be used to make the Alexa “skill” and interactions. The other group was in charge of managing the photon sensor input and output. The Photon group then made functions to be placed on the photon that would keep track of info gathered by its sensors and control it’s LED lights. The Alexa group then built the program to incorporate calls to those functions. The final product was a “skill” for Alexa that can interpret various voice commands to control the photons array of functions simulating a fully functioning smart home.

Challenges we ran into

We had to learn Javascript and the Alexa API. We also struggled finding a way to create a bridge between the Amazon Echo and the Photon Development Board

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to successfully complete our project with time to spare, if possible we would add more sensors and appliances to emulate more applications and appliances that would exist in a smart home.

What we learned

Implementing this project required our team to cover a lot of unfamiliar territory. No one on our team was experienced in implementing javascript, Amazon Web Services, or Lambda. These parts were extremely important to implementing the Amazon Echo side of the project. On the other end of the project which interfaced with the sensors through the photon, the team had to learn how to use several sensors and actuators, to get data from them to the Amazon Echo. These sensors included temperature sensors and ultrasonic sensors. Using these sensors on an integrated device to communicate with a complex device like the Echo wirelessly was certainly a challenge. The team as a whole learned and implemented many new resources and was able to successfully integrate them with each other.

What's next for Alexa's Photon Smart Home

If this team were to continue this project there would be several things which we could improve on. For one the Amazon Echo commands could be designed to be less strict, such that the commands to control the device were more obvious. Also more sensors could be implemented to interface with the Photon for higher accuracy as well as improved functionality. Furthermore the project could be designed to be more concise and perhaps be improved by the use of a PCB and a case.