Lost It

Lost and Found will assist you in finding misplaced items or store an items location so you can find it later.

Comment

Inspiration

I am always losing stuff and most of the time it's because I have put it down somewhere and simply not thought about it. I also start to panic which means I stop thinking clearly and it takes longer to find anything. It made me wonder if there was something I could do to make the process of finding lost items calmer.

What it does

This skill allows the user to check in any item to a location of their choice and then recall where they checked it in at a later date. If an item has not been checked it will also step through a structured process to help calm the user and find a lost item. In doing so it will store previous lost locations so if the user loses it again that can be the first place they check.

How I built it

I coded the skill in node.js using Lambda and the Alexa Skill Kit (ASK). I also used DynamoDB to provide persistence.

Challenges I ran into

For storing previously lost items I wanted to have the option to have multiple different previously lost locations for each item which became quite tricky. I ended up having to spend some time learning how to implement multi-dimensional arrays.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

It's the first time I have used DynamoDB properly so I am proud that I have managed to get it to save attributes between sessions.

What I learned

I learned a lot about using DynamoDB and coding using node.js but I also learned a lot about planning. The lost process contains multiple steps with different options from the user so when implementing this section I needed to take a step backwards and go back to the planning stage to ensure mistakes weren't introduced.

What's next for Lost and Found

Currently it only stores five previous lost locations. I would like to extend this so it only reads out five locations but if the user asks for more than it can facilitate this. If the user left the session during the lost process then when the skill is reopened it reenters this process. if the user has not used the skill in awhile then it would be useful to detect this and cancel the process.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates