Inspiration
It started when I was working on a website with my team to track the COVID statistics worldwide and present it along with news on the vaccine and news highlights regarding COVID. When the team disbanded before the project finished, I decided that I was going to finish it, and the best way for me to do that alone in as little time I had left, was to make use of Alexa Skills.
What it does
The Amazon Echo listens for key phrases, and if the phrase is a question the Echo recognizes, it retrieves the most recent information on the virus from an API that is updated near daily.
How I built it
The Alexa Tool Kit was used to make the invocations and accepted inputs for Alexa. Node.js and Lambda were used for the backend, where Lambda was used for the servers, and Node.js dealt with the queries in the backend.
Challenges I ran into
I had less time to dedicate to this project because the first project I started on during the hackathon fell through, leaving me with about 6 hours to learn and use Alexa skills and Amazon Lambda. After building the Node.js side of the skill I ran into a problem with the axios package I was using to talk to the API, where Lambda requires you to upload the package so that your code can use it. This was the one challenge I was unable to overcome, even though the code would work on my local machine, I could not get Lamda to use the package through the cli, with the only other option being using a Linux system, which would've taken time to install that I didn't have in the last hour.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Managing to create an Alexa Skill, as well as my first time using an API.
What I learned
While looking for COVID API's I ran into Postman, which has a library of several public API's, many that piqued my interest for a potential project in upcoming hackathons, that was a great tool to learn about as well as the Amazon console, which contains Alexa and Lambda tools among others. The struggle with installing the axios package also led to me learning more about what development environment to use and setup for Lambda, which will be beneficial if I end up having to use Lambda and the Alexa tool kit again.
What's next for Virus Tracker
Expanding to include other known viruses and their information, and more capabilities including obtaining and relaying news headlines on the viruses, and using Web Scraping along with a database, to store key information from the CDC regarding the viruses, which would be beneficial for users and their queries.
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