QuickFit Workout

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  Quick Fit Workout's Skill page!

My inspiration

for creating Alexa skills has always been to have the feeling of creating something which will be happily used by customers. I am currently a Computer Science Student at Northern Arizona University, and I have been constantly trying to find new ways to experience a little slice of the world before I am finished with my studies. So I landed here, making skills off of the knowledge I've learned thus far in school, and through my own researching.

Quick fit Workout

provides a coach to help any one at home to do a quick 15 minute workout with the muscle group of choice. The user can choose Upper Body, Core, Lower Body, or Full body. Once the chosen, Alexa will create a random workout suited to the chosen muscle group. After every exercise alexa will ask how many reps the user did, and keep track of the users progression! At the end, the user receives a full list of each exercise they did, and how many reps they did with it!

It all started with a nap

yes, you heard it, a nap! I had recently began learning about Alexa's custom skill building and was incredibly intriguede. I immediately had started brainstorming to think of some new skill to create, but nothing could come to mind. After thinking through multiple possibilities, I had eventually decided to nap to get a fresh mind. I'd say half-way through the nap I burst up, and had relized that I was just dreaming of a skill I made to help people get in shape, and to do it quickly. Thus came the name QuickFit Workout. I immediately jolted up and began thinking of the skill and researched other workout skills to see what they were like. Although there were some competitors, that did not stop me, and i began my 2-3 week process of learning the Alexa API, and building my skill!

A lot of my challenges

I had run into consisted of not really knowing how things worked. It was a slow but fun process. From learning how to make alexa speak, to making custom cards to display in the companion app. there were always challenges. One of my largest challenges was learning how to implement a Database system using DynamoDB! I had foolishly been assuming I could keep the user's data with the Python files, and immediately learned that this was not a possibility. It took a lot of researching, but I finally found how to connect my skill to my database, and make changes to it! This allowed me to make uch more progress on production!!! Along with that, BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS, and also hearing "THERE WAS A PROBLEM WITH THE REQUESTED SKILL'S RESPONSE!"

Im proud of how

quickly I formulated my idea and implemented it with no previous knowledge with Alexa programming. It all started with showing my mother how i could change what she could say in one of the tutorial skills. I'm very proud with how far I've come and will continue to make new skills, and keep my current skills updated.

I've learned a lot

through this project. I learned the importance of keeping data in a database safe, I've learned that there usually will always be a way to solve any problem you come across. Even if the problem may end up not having the right solution, I learned to always keep trying and to keep researching untill you truly learn. There were multiple points where it had seemed as though my dream of creating this project had ended, but with hard work and researching I had finally understood each aspect and stepped up to the next challenge!

What's next for Quick Fit Workout?

Currently I am waiting for more user feedback about the skill! I want to tailor the skill according to what users want and think. Currently, my next update to Quick Fit Workout is to implement GIFs into the custom cards to give the user a better idea of how to do each workout. Currently, there are only pictures and a description for each workout, but I feel as though a quick GIF will be an easier way for people to understand and learn how to do each workout, if they don't know how to do it.

Built With

• python