A long time ago when they first came out I was going to buy an (Echo)[http://amzn.to/1SSB73t]. Then I didn’t. Then they got really cheap so now I have an (Echo)[http://amzn.to/1SSB73t].
It’s the weekend and I’ve been writing a crazy amount of code for one of our projects. I needed a break. My son
needed to learn a bit of Javascript. At (Atomic Jolt)[http://www.atomicjolt.com] we use (Amazon Lambda)[https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/] for various client projects.
Turns out you can add ‘skills’ to your Echo using (Amazon Lambda)[https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/].
(NASA has an Open API)[https://api.nasa.gov/] that lists near earth objects. Since it’s important to know if you are going to die by astroid at
any given moment we put it all together and now we have SpaceBall. Just have Alexa ‘ask SpaceBall if we’re all going to die and you’ll get a list of objects near the earth on any given day.
If you’re interested here’s the code on (Github)[https://github.com/jbasdf/spaceball] and
(Amazon has a decent tutorial)[https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/developing-an-alexa-skill-as-a-lambda-function].