Want FRC data? Just ask Alexa! (teaser)

Technical Technical Discussion
1

Here’s a demo of an Amazon Alexa Skill (essentially just a voice app for an Amazon Echo) I’ve been working on. It pretty much just pulls data from The Blue Alliance and spits it back out in complete sentences. While I don’t forsee it having much of a use for hardcore scouting, it’s a great way to casually check up on your favorite teams during competition season.

Does anyone on CD have an Echo? What do you think would be most useful tidbits you could ask for?

Features planned for first release:
•How did team #### do in their last match?
•Tell me about team ####
•What awards has team #### won?
•What is team #### ranked at their current/most recent competition?
•Give me stats for team ####
•What are the current rankings for the competition team #### is at?

2

I read this really wrong…

But it looks pretty cool!

3

That’s so cool!

4

Awesome, please send the script.

5

I’m submitting it to Amazon sometime this week to get certified, and I’d like to keep the source to myself until it’s published (just so nobody beats me to the certification). If you’d like to play around with building something similar, I’m using Java and the OkHTTP library to pull data from the Blue Alliance API, converting the response from JSON to a Java object using Gson, then just plugging the information into full sentances.

6

I have an echo and this would really be an awesome feature!

“Alexa, who won the Championship Chairman’s Award in 2012?”

“Simbotics from St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada”

7

I have been thinking about getting an echo… This might push me to buy one.

8

Original post updated with a list of features planned for first release. I’d still love to hear suggestions!

9

Nice.

OPR/DPR would be handy for scouting meetings!

10

This sounds way cool. It’s too bad that I’d have almost zero use for one otherwise.

11

Nice! Wish Echo was available in Canada.

Video demo anyone?