I mentioned a few weeks back in my intro post that I was working on an Alexa skill that talks to Particle devices. I have a v1 just about ready to go and am looking to publish the skill and a blog post next week, but I need some beta testers to help me make sure the skill actually works with other people’s accounts and devices.
So, If you’re interested, you have an Echo device on hand and one or more connected Particle devices, PM me your email address and I’ll add you to the beta tester list.
I have an Echo dot and I’ve written a simple Alexa skill to interface to my Particle-based pool controller, using the Alexa Smart Home standard devices (thermostat, switch, etc.)
Now that’s a nice skill! Were you able to set up oauth for the account linking to use all three redirect url’s for the different regions around the world?
Thanks! It’s been fun to work on! For auth, I’m just using the single (layla) redirect at the moment. Do you expect that will cause me an issue with international folks?
Were you able to test it out some and get things working? If you can, would you mind testing some of the get/set active device intents?
Yes, If you released this in the US, it may have problems with international people. There is a lambda proxy for oauth, I’m thinking of using that to fix the problem.
On a side note – I found a really easy way (once you get started, and understand the concepts) to integrate Alexa with Particle. I’ve been using my SmartThings hub, and I’ve been writing custom device handlers for Particle, and then creating SmartThings Routines for the custom actions. The one benefit to this is that the SmartThings Routines “just work” with Alexa, so if you create a routine called “Blah”, you can automatically say “Alexa, Blah {action}”.
Hi folks! I’ve submitted the skill for review in order to get it out this week–or early next week, at the latest–so the beta testing period is over for now. I’ll post here once it’s live.
I’ve already started a list of V2 features so once you all have a chance to test it some more, I’d love to hear what’s missing or could be improved.
One note: As of now, the skill is NOT available in Germany, France or Japan. I tried to push it through with English responses, but this is apparently a no-no. I do want to add support for these countries, but I am going to need some help with string localization. I have a project in the GitHub repo if you’re interested in helping. Once I factor out the response strings, maybe we can take a pass at German @ScruffR?
Thanks! I am going to refactor the current response strings into a resources object over the weekend. From there, I could use your help to create German strings, as well as German sample utterances. I’ll ping you when I’m ready.
