Rosie D Stories

Inspiration

With Alexa becoming apart of the everyday routine not only for adults but also for children, I wanted to make a skill that could be used daily. I remember when I was younger my bedtime routine would be to listen to stories on cassettes or cds and now with Alexa being a smart speaker, stories can be added to that platform.

What it does

Rosie D Stories is a children's skill where it reads short stories. There are currently five stories on there which you can play by saying for example. Alexa ask Rosie D Stories to read Kenny the Cat, or if you want to read all the stories, just say Alexa, ask Rosie D Stories to read stories.

How I built it

Five stories were written for the skill

I built the skill in Node JS with the cli and the alexa sdk v2. As I had made an audio skill using the alexa sdk v1 I thought there would not be much difference between the two other than the syntax used but It turned out to be very different. I used Garageband to record the audio for the stories and I used APL to create the visuals.

Challenges I ran into

The first challenge was working out APL as it was a feature new to me. Looking at the documentation and webinars, it helped massively and gave me an understanding of how to do it.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm really proud I got to craft a skill with APL as it will definitely be a feature I will continue to add in all the future skills from now on.

What I learned

I have made an audio skill before but that was with the old sdk v1. I had to learn how to adjust it using the new sdk v2 as well as with cli. Also I learnt alot about APL as at first it did seem intimidating but after doing some practice apl skills, I managed to get the hang of it and understand it a bit more.