An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
developer.amazon.com
An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
1–10 of 43 posts
Re: An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
#2I own several Echo devices and programmability of Alexa devices just baffles me.
There is still no way for a skill to read notifications. For example - I want to write a calendar notification app which unifies all calendar events across several sources and there is just no way to do it. It is of course disabled in the name of privacy which I can understand - but I don't understand how I can't enable this for a device that I own from an app I write.
Similarly - I was considering getting an Echo Show for keeping a persistent view of my todo list and upcoming things on Echo show. I looked at writing skills for Echo show. Something that should be a webapp that just renders a particular source or something similar. But nope - It just looks hard or impossible.
Re: An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
#3Definitely going to give this a try over the weekend. I bailed pretty quick a few months ago when I wanted to build a spelling bee skill for Alexa in Python. It was a total joke--terrible docs, cumbersome API and just simply not fun. Hoping this is a step in the right direction.
Re: An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
#4Would be nice if there was a VPN mechanism for Lambdas such I could securely connect to my home network from them... perhaps port knocking or the single-packet equivalent... I don't want to open my listener to the world when I already have a suitable UDP based thing going on with VPN.......
EDIT: woops... maybe you can? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46329464/can-an-aws-lamb...
Re: An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
#5Would be nice if there was a VPN mechanism for Lambdas such I could securely connect to my home network from them... perhaps port knocking or the single-packet equivalent... I don't want to open my listener to the world when I already have a suitable UDP based thing going on with VPN....... EDIT: woops... maybe you can? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46329464/can-an-aws-lamb...
ngrok.com
Re: An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
#6Flask-ask makes it pretty easy.
Re: An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
#7After banging my head trying to get access to start using Amazon's product advertising APIs and product matching info APIs, I'd like to politely say: screw Amazon.
If you keep slapping away developers on one end, then don't expect us to get excited about building things for your products on the other end.
Re: An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
#8I own several Echo devices and programmability of Alexa devices just baffles me. There is still no way for a skill to read notifications. For example - I want to write a calendar notification app which unifies all calendar events across several sources and there is just no way to do it. It is of course disabled in the name of privacy which I can understand - but I don't understand how I can't enable this for a device…
Can you use a mobile app as a conduit? Central server Alexa pushes to and polls from, mobile app similarly but has permissions for calendar to do actual work? I know it’s contrived but seems like a reasonable approach.
Re: An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
#9I own several Echo devices and programmability of Alexa devices just baffles me. There is still no way for a skill to read notifications. For example - I want to write a calendar notification app which unifies all calendar events across several sources and there is just no way to do it. It is of course disabled in the name of privacy which I can understand - but I don't understand how I can't enable this for a device…
Question: are you trying to read Android notifications? Or perhaps read Alexa notifications? I would think you can pretty easily write a skill to feed you a unified calendar (you'd need to do the calendar unification on your own server, though).
Re: An Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
#10Flask-ask makes it pretty easy. https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-ask
I recently contributed to Flask-Ask and have been developing apps for Alexa for a while now. The APIs/Boilerplate code for the `easier way` is definitely harder than Flask-Ask is right now.