Create Your Own Amazon Alexa Skill from Scratch

“Alexa, what’s a hot skill to have right now?” “It’s Alexa Skills!”
Artificial intelligence is taking the world by storm, and smart speakers like Alexa will continue to become more pervasive for the foreseeable future. In this hands-on tutorial, I’ll teach you the basics so you can take advantage of this exciting area of technology.

Timestamps:
00:00 – Interacting with the Alexa Skill we’ll be building (fun fact about cats!)
00:18 – Accessing the Alexa Developer Console (requires an Amazon Developer account)
02:04 – Updating an Alexa Skill’s invocation name, saving and building the model
03:20 – Testing an Alexa Skill using the simulator
04:24 – How an Alexa Skill works
06:00 – Adding functionality to our Alexa Skill for fun facts
08:05 – Explaining the interaction model or front end: wake word, launch, invocation, utterance, slot and intent for an Alexa Skill
09:36 – Adding fun facts into a new JS file
10:44 - Updating the speakOutput in HelloWorldIntentHandler to retrieve a random fun fact
11:46 – Explaining shouldEndSession: false in an Alexa Skill
12:31 – Replacing the HelloWorld code with our own
13:35 – Updating the interaction model/front end and intents
15:15 – Testing our updated Alexa Skill
15:26 – How to implement a reprompt and keep the session open
16:20 –Testing the Alexa Skill on your phone

[TinyTechnicalTutorials]

What else do you want to learn in AWS? Let me know below in the comments!

[mskleftwich]

Thanks so much for this amazingly detailed and well made tutorial.

[loganlemay]

YOU SAVED MY Thx so much for the insanely great tutorial

[MEHEDIHASAN-pgti]

That's an impressive tutorial.
I was wondering if any project using APL pie chart visualization is possible using some kind JSX.

[kianmomtahan]

Not watched all of this yet, but I really appreciate the hand holding. I often run into issues with guides where they skips out "simple steps" and I spend 10 minutes trying to get past 5 seconds of skipped content.

[lealandsellers]

I’m going to use this to build my skill tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes. Thank you.

[bharathkumar]

Great and simple Tutorial to get started :)

[cekiert]

Could the developer options allow more smart automation beyond what a routine can.
Say I wanted something
If door sensor open and light off then turn light on...

I know routines can't have multiple conditions to trigger events I know a few other external options like ifttt can fill gaps at a monthly rate


Any obstacles in using this at home, hosting costs, do I need to share the skill publicly?

[pythonantole]

How do we manage API credentials in a skill. Say we want to read data from a service in which every user has a unique API key, how would we go about it.

[gbarnabic]

How did you get that magnifying glass icon to show in the address bar that allowed you to increase the font size? It was around the 7:28 mark.

[mustafadursun]

Hello is it possible to send alexa speaker output to aws iot mqtt topic with alexa developer console ?

[alistairmurray]

Awesome tutorial! I'm trying to learn how to get Alexa to communicate with a ESP32 wifi module. I can get it to send /receive messages to the AWS, and i can also get Alexa to turn on/off dim or brighten an led/fan/or any circuit connected to the ESP32, but Alexa thinks she is turning on or dimming a light bulb (because i tricked her, hee hee), is there a way to create my own device with my own parameters in Alexa developer console?, and not just an on/off / pwm. Ideally serial communications, i would like to be able to say "Alexa, record my voice", "<she replies with "ok, start talking now, say "Stop recording" to end recording">, and then i say my message e.g "hello world, stop recording", and then she converts my message to text and sends the string to m ESP32 module, and i can print the text in my serial monitor for example? or maybe alexa would have to publish the text to a AWS topic and my ESP32 can subcribe to the topic and get the message from there? (sorry i don't understand the AWS as much as i'd like so i may have said some terms wrong).

[juice]

Hi, great video. I am looking to test my skill on my iPAD and have downloaded the app and signed in using the same credentials as on the developer website, however it is not showing the skill that i have been developing anywhere? I have tried searching for it and looking through my skills however it shows nothing. Help would be massively appreciated as i am looking to use this feature for my University Dissertation.

[hearthrob]

Is there a way to get Alexa to respond in different voices such as kid's voice or make animal sounds based on what the user asks?

[rtichy]

Is the link to pluralsight (above) still valid? I tried to go look at that, and I got the impression that Pluralsight may have altered their sites and broken the link, or something?

[alljcory]

I'm brand spanking new and the missing (') after const facts = require('./funfacts) and missing semicolon after in examples were initially killing me, but thank you so much for the quick demo it was fun once i figured out the syntax errors which in a way added to my learning) 😀

[doughorwat]

Is it possible to build a skill to stream my favorite radio station?And also play on alexa speaker groups. I have the main digital stream url of the station.

[meh]

If I wanted to add a reprompt at the end, what would I need to do?

[fabianapimentel]

Great video! I have a question: create those skills it's free? Depending on the kind of skill i create, have I to pay anything?

[cartergiese]

Hello, great video thus far. I'm at 11:32 in the video and am stuck I can't get my code to deploy. I press deploy and there's either no response or it says there is an error. Any tips to get past this?