I've just published my first Alexa skill. If you've got an Alexa Echo device, and have any interest in space exploration, I think you'll find it interesting.
Spaceman is a free app for your Amazon Alexa device. I created it because I've always had a deep interest in space exploration, and building a way to keep informed of news in this area, and even inspire curiosity, seemed a good exercise for me to teach myself the technology behind Amazon Alexa and AWS Lambda functions.
It currently provides information to you about:
- Phase of the moon
- Scheduled rocket launches anywhere in the world, both past and future
- Asteroids and other objects passing close to the Earth, for dates you request
To get a quick overview of the current news, just say
Alexa, ask Spaceman what's up?But Spaceman also understands dates, so you can ask about other days you're interested in
- Alexa, ask Spaceman what's up tomorrow?
- Alexa, ask Spaceman what's up next Tuesday?
- Alexa, ask Spaceman what happened yesterday?
Date ranges will work as well. And it can be future or past
- Alexa, ask Spaceman what happened between January 1 2017 and January 10 2017?
- Alexa, ask Spaceman what's happening from today to Friday?
Typical output is like (spoken, of course)
News for Saturday, January 21, 2017
SpaceMan
This is a waning crescent moon.
==================
Date: Saturday, January 21, 2017 12:42 AM
Status: Success
Name: Atlas V 401 | SBIRS GEO-4 (SBIRS GEO Flight 3)
Location: Cape Canaveral, FL, USA
==================
8 objects are passing near the Earth. None of them are potentially hazardous.
The nearest will pass by us at a distance of 26.7 times the distance to the moon. It will be traveling about 9 thousand miles per hour, and have a diameter between 48 and 107 feet.
More information is available at http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=3704156
You can get the skill from here:
https://www.amazon.com/Chris-Wuestefeld-SpaceMan/dp/B01NCX6VF7/More info about it here:
https://sites.google.com/view/spacemanforalexa/