Mensa München

An Amazon Alexa skill an user can ask to get the menu of all munich student canteens.

Comment

Inspiration

Using open data to create an Alexa skill that I would use everyday!

What it does

The skill tells the user the menu to a wished canteen in Munich. Currently there are roughly 5-10 supported student canteens. The skill can not only tell you todays menu, but also for the future.

Currently it's only available in German, because the userbase is primarly German. English will follow soon, however.

How I built it

It's using node.js and the corresponding alexa SDK. The data is coming from the public API of openmensa.org

Challenges I ran into

I find it hard to determine good and well designed utterances. But by asking some friends and others I was able to finetune the utterances so the skill now understands natural questions and commands.

What I learned

I loved to learn how to work with the Alexa Skills Kit and learning about Voice User Interface (VUI) design.

What's next for Mensa München

There are currently some things on the ToDo:

  • Support English
  • Support more munich canteens
  • Maybe add Flash Briefing capabilities
  • Evaluate whether it makes sense to let the user define a "default canteen"

Built With

Share this project:

Updates