Sleep and Relaxation Sounds

Inspiration

For years, I've fallen asleep to the peaceful sound of ocean waves lapping against the shore. Early on, the sound was generated by a sound machine. More recently, the sounds have been coming from an app on my phone. When I first got my Alexa device, I immediately started searching for a skill that would give me the same capabilities plus allow me to control the sounds with my voice. There weren't any. As a software engineer, I immediately started thinking about the possibilities. Sleep and Relaxation Sounds was born!

What it does

Sleep and Relaxation Sounds lets you play ambient sounds to help you sleep peacefully or block out unwanted noise at work or home. With over 35 high quality sounds to choose from, you'll be able to sleep better, stay focused, study without interruption, relax quickly, meditate more effectively, and get your baby to go to sleep faster!

How I built it

Sleep and Relaxation Sounds is built on the alexa-skills-kit running as an AWS Lambda function. As an audio streaming skill, it uses the full spectrum of Audio Directives. By default, the sounds will loop automatically until you tell them to stop. You can say "Alexa, Next" or "Alexa, Previous" to navigate between sounds.

Although the Alexa skill development process is time-consuming to get "right", creating high-quality sounds is equally as difficult. I get my sounds from several places: the easiest is to license them from quality sources

Challenges I ran into

Building a quality skill takes a tremendous amount of time and effort. The biggest challenge is anticipating all of the possible things your users might say and providing them with a natural response. For example, I have several sounds with the word "forest" in the title: Forest Birds, Rainforest, and Forest Night. Most users will say one of those names exactly....no problem. What do you do when they say "Play forest sounds"? There are lots of options, but I chose to do what a human would do... ask them what they intended. So, I tell them "I can play several forest sounds: Forest Birds, Forest Night, and Rainforest. Which one would you like me to play?". Of course there are thousands of these types of interactions that you have to work through if you want the very highest quality skill!

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Maintaining a high star-rating is very difficult. You have to constantly communicate with your users, listen to their feedback, and respond to their needs. I have responded to almost every poor review and have addressed issues quickly. I get dozens of e-mails from people every day. Some need help using their Alexa devices, some need instructions on using the skill, and others are asking for new sounds. I respond as fast as I can and always within 24 hours to their requests. I then follow-up with them to make sure their issue was addressed. It's hard work, for sure, but it has paid off with Sleep and Relaxation Sounds having a 4.6+ rating with over 750 reviews... the most of any skill on the platform!

What I learned

The most important thing I've learned through this experience is that people are excited about voice technology. They are jumping in with both feet and can't wait to see what's next. This technology is changing so fast! We are only in the beginning stages of something that is going to change our lives forever!

What's next for Sleep and Relaxation Sounds

Of course, we are going to be releasing dozens of new sounds and making useability improvements to the skill. We also have some ideas for new features that we are very excited about! You'll just have to wait and see!

Built With

• alexa-skills-kit
• aws-lambda
• node.js