Find Streams

Inspiration

Tired of looking through poorly maintained websites that tell you who has the movie you're looking for available for streaming? Yeah I was too.

What it does

Just tell Alexa to ask Find Streams who is streaming "Your Movie Here". If you can't rmember the full title of the movie, tell Alexa to ask Find Streams who is streaming movies LIKE "Your Movie Here". Alexa will find the best matches for your title and ask you to narrow down the results of needed. Try not to be too vague though, in interest of world compute power conservation we've instructed Alexa to only return up to 10 matches. She'll ask you to be more specific if your search matches more than 10.

How I built it

Loads of Coffee, Vitamin B Complex, and some free time. Also made use of Amazons jamming Lamdba Python 2.7 interpreter.

Challenges I ran into

When multiple matches are found it's challenging to narrow down the results following using natural conversation. I had to use a number intent and add some KvPs to the session that get reused when the number intent is given by the user.

It's also challenging addressing the reviews and requests in the "App Store". People have downvoted the skill without providing details and in some cases without even being correct.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

It's my first published Alexa Skill so that was rewarding enough. I also got some bragging rights on Facebook and if I were to win the hackathon that'd be the icing on the cake! I was proud that I've learned enough about IT and development to figure out a completely new concept (lambda) without any major setbacks.

What I learned

I learned how to use version control with ASK. I learned a new API (for polling the movie details & searches). I learned that there are 32 movie titles that match a vague search "like twilight".

What's next for Find Streams

Next up is given Find Streams a "Provider Intent" using a custom list so that users can ask if "Die Hard" is on "Netflix" for example. Also in the works is an intent for general providers such as "Subscription Services" versus "Pay Per View" versus "Free".