Inspiration
I am a proud father of a 4 years old boy, and I have experienced the anxiety about my baby's growth right after his birth. After every doctor's visit or measuring at home I was wondering if the height and weight is proper or not. So always searching for internet or chart of clinics to compare it. This influenced me to thinking of a skill in Alexa ecosystem which can readily give me reference of standard height and weight for an age and gender. This would save the hassle of searching net everytime or searching for the chart and find the appropriate value.
What it does
This skill is a ready-made guide to provide standard height and weight for kids upto 5 years of age. Just provide the age and gender of the baby and it would provide the WHO provided mean value. Also the skill would give 1 percentile and 99 percentile values to give an idea of the range of values to the user. It is absolutely easy to use and user needs to provide the gender and the age of the kid. The age can me provided in days or weeks or months or years.
How I built it
The core component is written in node.js and deployed using server-less architecture as AWS lambda function. The lambda function is being called from the Alexa VUI while got invoked.
Challenges I ran into
Nothing major, as I am familiar with the Alexa ecosystem and already published more than a dozen of skills, setting up the skill was not much difficult. Only challenge I faced was to find and format WHO certified data so that user would get authentic information.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I am really satisfaied after completing the skill, as this would hlep to reduce at least one worry new parents have to deal along with several others. From my personal experience this skill can be a real life hack for all the kids and toddler parents.
What I learned
I learned a few new node.js functions. Also learned a lot about WHO as I have the habit if side-reading while trying to search for a topic.
What's next for Kids Growth Guide
Along with Height and weight for age, there are two more important growth parameters for kids, which are BMI-for-age and Head Circumference-for-age. In the second release (for which I started the development in parallel already) I have the plan to add these the parameters as well. So this skill can be a complete reference and can help more to the parents.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.