Chapter 2 • Creating your Amazon Account

2.1 Introduction

There are three ways to create an Alexa Skill.

1. Using Alexa-Hosted Skill – this is most probably the easiest way. You don’t need an AWS account – you can just get started.

2. Using AWS Lambda and the Developer Console.

3. Using an IDE (such as Visual Studio code) and ASK CLI (Alexa Skills Kit and Command Line Interpreter).

In any case, you need an Amazon developer account.

We’ll use an Alexa-Hosted skill where we can. It provides most of the requirements we need including extra storage (S3) and a database (DynamoDB). We’ll study these in a later chapter.

2.2 Create your Amazon account

You don’t need an AWS account for Alexa-Hosted skills, but you will need one for smart home skills.

Go to the Amazon Developer website at: https://developer.amazon.com/

Click ‘Developer Console’ and create your Amazon Developer account.

Complete the form and create your account. You may have to authenticate it with an OTP.

Answer the rest of the questions in the Amazon Developer Registration.

Agree to the terms and click submit.

You can now provide payment information, user roles, etc., or leave until later. If you want to earn money from In Skill Purchases, you will have to complete this.

The next screen is the Amazon Developer Dashboard – My Account page: https://developer.amazon.com/settings/console/myaccount

However, you can always complete this later.

Eventually, you will get to the developer console.

We will be using the Alexa Skills Kit but note the other items here.

• Alexa Voice Service (AVS) is used to integrate Alexa features and functions into a product (see chapter 17).

• Amazon Appstore is an app store for Android and provides apps for Fire Tablets.

• Amazon Dash console enables you to manage Amazon dash buttons.

• Amazon GameOn is for mobile gamers to share their experiences (high scores, tips, tricks, etc.) and to participate in challenges.

• Login with Amazon (LWA) is used to authenticate users using their Amazon accounts. You need this if you create any smart home devices.

We’ll use LWA and AVS later.

2.3 Your skills

Clicking the Alexa Skill Kit takes you to the development console. If this is the first time you’ve been here, you won’t have any skills listed.

2.4 Hosting

Click on the Hosting tab to see what you’re allowed to access.

You’ll find the storage and data transfer more than enough for now.

2.5 Summary

In this chapter, we saw the different ways of creating and Alexa skill, created our developer account, and saw how to start an Alexa-Hosted skill.

In the next chapter we’ll develop our first skill.

Index

A

Alexa-Hosted Skill 19, 23, 27 Alexa Presentation Language - APL 125

APL Commands 150, APL Visual Responses 135

ASK CLI 23, 107, 114 AVS 262, 263, 264 await and async 93

C

Certification and publishing 99, 272 CloudWatch logs 34, 44, 47

D

Datasources 127, 129, 132 developer console 19, 23, 25 dialogs 51, 52, 72 Discover your device 210, 222, DynamoDB 19, 23, 28

E

Execute Commands directive 150,157

I

In-skill purchasing 158,272 intent 17, 18, 20 interaction model 15, 19, 29 interceptor 90, 91, 93 IoT Thing 184, 225, 242

L

Lambda 15, 16, 19

Login with Amazon 25, 201, 219 LWA 25, 120, 121

M

MQTT 184, 187, 188

N

Node-RED 225, 226, 227

Node-RED dashboard 237, 249

Node-RED IoT Application 244

Node-RED user interface 227, 249

P

Persistent attributes 19, 53, 65 Pi SQS code 216 Proactive events 250 Progressive Response 179, 183 R

Request and response 20, 90, 98

S

S3 storage 46, 83, 95 Sense Hat output 241, 248 session attributes 19, 20, 65 Skill request 40 Skill response 42 Slots 16, 17, 17 Smart home devices 201, 272 SQS 214, 216, 217 SQS Queue 214 SSML 20, 42, 43 stand-alone 262, 271

T

Transformers 151 U

Utterance 18, 57, 58

V

Visual Components 140