Following a three way coincidence (this thread, a chat with a friend who has an Amazon Echo and some research into Raspberry Pi projects) I decided to see if I could build an Alexa device with my Raspberry Pi.
I followed the tutorial on Amazon’s developer web site and, after a few hiccups I finally got it to work. It answers questions and tells jokes as the genuine article does. She seems to have a sense of humour when responding to some inputs.
She even answered correctly my standard awkward question: “What is the square root of minus one?â€.
However, I don’t think it can operate lights etc. without further work plus further hardware in addition to a wifi enabled lamp.
Also Alexa says that “Spotify is not supported on this deviceâ€.
I’m still researching what it can do.
Of course the cost of a Raspberry Pi plus ancillaries is more than a basic Amazon Echo but it has exercised my brain for a few hours. :-)
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