Check In

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  Check In

Inspiration

I was impressed by the kiosk at my doctor's office. How simple to just walk up to the machine and not deal with the receptionists. I wanted something in my own home as simple, and Check In is in fact even simpler because of voice utilization. It's a neat little skill.

What it does

Check In is much like having your own personal kiosk in your home. Check In logs the comings and goings of family members by simply gathering their name and using the set timezone to log when they've checked in or out. Check In now is able to attempt to gather return times, so family members have an idea when the person who checked out may return. Check In will also announce where everyone is by asking "where is everyone?", then Check In will read the logs up to 2 days prior if anyone has checked in or out. It's a convenient application with much potential that can reduce worry among family members, because everyone can keep track of each other.

How I built it

Most of this application is built using Php. There's a lot of database accessing, and that is how it updates individual names within the household. So for example, the skill will find the access token and the name specified and update whether that person is checking in or out, then also update the time and date.

Challenges I ran into

This wasn't a hard project to accomplish, but I did have some trouble with error handling. Specifically when there were empty slot values for intents, but I had already solved this problem in other skills I have created, so it was an easy fix. The other challenge was just figuring out how to go about the overall idea of the app. I settled on just using first names to identify household members.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud of the functionality of the skill. I think this skill could be very useful and could potentially help comfort parents, because they will know when their kids left to go hang out with friends or when they are expected home.

What I learned

Do it right the first time. There's nothing worse than having to go back and re-write bad code.

What's next for Check In

I would like to add a location feature, letting family members know where they are going. Potentially even a smartphone app to accompany the skill that alerts family members when someone is checking out or checking in, if they want to enable that feature.

Built With

• php
• sql