NovaLink Hub

Inspiration

What it does

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for NovaLink Hub

Inspiration

Smart homes have become fragmented across different device ecosystems. Controlling living room entertainment (Fire TV), checking front-door security (Ring), and orchestrating voice interactions (Alexa+) typically requires jumping between different apps. With Amazon opening up the Alexa+ Model Context Protocol (MCP) and device ecosystem, we were inspired to build NovaLink Hub—a unified mobile gateway that bridges the front door, the living room, and generative AI agents into a single interactive chat experience.

What it does

NovaLink Hub is a native Android application built with Jetpack Compose that empowers users to control and monitor their Amazon smart home via conversational messaging:

• Alexa+ Agent Dispatch: Invokes the registered Amazon Skill (amzn1.ask.skill.88e451cd-fab6-4452-a09f-35d45d27e5ae) through rapid quick-action controls and natural language.
• Ring Security Stream: Monitors real-time motion and doorbell camera security feeds with instant incident notifications.
• Fire TV Broadcast: Allows users to cast alerts, notifications, or text messages directly to Fire OS TV displays via contextual long-press actions.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) Integration: Backed by an official Node.js MCP server exposing specialized smart-home tools to Alexa+ agents.

How we built it

• Android Client: Native Kotlin and Jetpack Compose with Material 3 Dark Theme, coroutines, and reactive state management.
• Alexa+ MCP Server: Built using @modelcontextprotocol/sdk and Express on Node.js, exposing three core tools (alexa_send_command, ring_check_security, and firetv_cast_notification).
• Cloud Architecture: Linked with AWS Lambda for voice/intent fulfillment and tested via the Alexa Developer Console.
• Open Source: Fully open-sourced under the MIT License with complete deployment guides.

Challenges we ran into

Aligning native Android networking (HttpURLConnection and cleartext policies) with the self-hosted MCP server streamable protocol required strict JSON-RPC 2.0 schema matching. Furthermore, optimizing the mobile client for rapid, one-tap execution alongside conversational chat demanded thoughtful UX/UI engineering.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Successfully implementing a functional, self-hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server adhering to the 2025-11-25+ specification.
• Building, compiling, and testing a high-performance APK running directly on physical Android hardware.
• Connecting three major Amazon products (Alexa+, Ring, Fire TV) under one unified conversational roof.

What we learned

We gained deep hands-on expertise with the new Model Context Protocol (MCP) standard for AI agents, how Alexa+ interfaces with external tools, and how to build reactive Android Compose user interfaces that seamlessly communicate with serverless cloud infrastructure.

What's next for NovaLink Hub

• Expanding MCP server tooling to support multimodal APL (Alexa Presentation Language) templates on Fire TV.
• Adding WebRTC live video streaming from Ring cameras directly into the Compose media player.
• Publishing the app to the Amazon Appstore.

Built With

• alexa
• android
• aws-lambda
• express.js
• fire-tv
• jetpack-compose
• kotlin
• mcp
• model-context-protocol
• node.js
• ring-api