Alexa Morning Routine

Hack for Alexa Life Skills Challenge: Inspired by Tim Ferriss's 7 morning routines to own the day, minus journaling.

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Alexa Morning Routine

Inspiration

We are hyper productive, career oriented individuals who seek to optimize every aspect of our lives. From reading biographies from some of the world's top performers, such as Tim Ferriss and Tony Robbins, it became clear how important it is for these people to own the first thirty minutes of the morning to own the rest of the day.

What it does

We put together 6 of the most common routines into an easy-to-use skill that Alexa will guide you through.

Sample Usage

  1. Get out of bed within 2 minutes of waking up
    • We will add accountability here with a hardware component that senses whether or not you've actually left your bed or you just lied to Alexa, by detecting pressure changes on your mattress.
  2. Make your bed
  3. Meditate --> Plays ambient noise pulled from Soundcloud for the duration.
  4. Jump in a Cold Shower
  5. Drink some tea or coffee
    • Can automate this part by connecting to your coffee machine so you exit the shower to the smell of freshly brewed coffee.
  6. Exercise
    • Can add accountability by connecting to Fitbit/Apple Watch/etc. to confirm heart rate change.

Example

"Alexa, start my morning routine" ** "Okay, get out of bed. You have 2 minutes.

"Done" ** "Okay, now make your bed, you have 1 minute."

"Next Routine" ** "Okay, now time to meditate for 5 minutes." { Plays Ambient Noise }

etc.

How we built it

  • Using Python Flask-ASK and Jinja templates to interface with Alexa.
  • Using DynamoDB for tracking user sessions.
  • Using Fitbit API to add accountability and insights for user exercise sessions.
  • Streaming meditation tracks through Soundcloud API.
  • Streaming various sound effects stored on AWS S3.
  • Zappa for deployment.

Challenges we ran into

  • Ideating for ways to add accountability and usability to the idea, so that the routines stay fun and not become a burden.
  • Coordinating between timezones (Trilok is based in Bangalore, India & YJ in Berkeley, CA)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • User Experience

What we learned

  • Flask ASK

What's next for Morning Routine

  1. Add more accountability features.
  2. Add more customizability, as each individual will have different routines that work best for them.

How to Run Locally git clone

source path/to/virtualenvs/alexa_morning_routine_env/bin/activate

pip install flask-ask

pip install soundcloud

pip install boto3

python3 morning_routine.py

(in a separate terminal window/tab)

path/to/ngrok http 5000

Copy the forwarding address into the Endpoints tab in the Alexa Dev GUI https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/console/ask/test

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