AWS Alexa Skills+Lambda+Online Simulator

I tested Alexa Skills and Lambda yesterday and found some quite interesting and easy to use offering by AWS. I used one of the online lab to get guidance and code from AWS github.

Some interesting findings;

• Amazon Developer Portal https://developer.amazon.com/ is interesting web based platform which easily allows to create custom skills, flash briefing, smart home and video skills which can run on Amazon smart home devices like Amazon smart home devices.
• Developer portal has templates which can give easy to use predefined skills like Fact skills, quiz game skill, game skill or you can build something from scratch
• Creation of Invocation, Intents, Sample, Slots is super easy and web based. What makes more interesting is web-based JSON Editor. I am not developer from background. I can simply add intent, slot, sample, which creates code automatically. Then, i can make easy modification to JSON and make bulk changes or drag/drop JSON code to adjust accordingly.
• Once skill is created, we can use HTTPS or AWS Lambda ARM and will host your skill's service endpoint
• I tested Lambda code as endpoint
• Once all is done, I notice I used online simulator https://echosim.io/ how it comes up. I used either my voice to interact or use text to communicate with my Alex device which goes back to Lambda and talk to Alexa skills.
• All it takes less than 1 hour to get it done from scratch to simulator device responding to my voice.
• It was interesting game to play where i could check my chemistry knowledge and scoring (which i touched during my graduation days, chemistry was always my weaker point :-) . I was good in physics and maths)
• If you are good in coding, you can actually interesting solution Free of Cost on Developer Platform and actually monetize by publishing it.