Smart Mailbox

What's something much about a mailbox in the era of instant message services ? But sometimes there's a chance of missing some vital information by ignoring mails in the mailbox . So as a reminder we are here introducing a 

Briefly explaining the working , When Alexa is asked to check the mailbox,it send the command to Raspberry Pi via ngrok and which serially transmit command Arduino which to Proximity sensor . Proximity sensor inspects the status and returns the status serially.

                                                 UNBOXING THE SMART  MAIL BOX

SETTING UP AVS ON RASPBERRY PI

This guide provides step-by-step instructions for setting up AVS on a 

GUIDE

For interacting with the alexa ,you need the following..

• USB Microphone/Sound card - Raspberry Pi does not have a built-in microphone; to interact with Alexa you'll need an external one to plug in.

• External Speaker with 3.5mm audio cable.

HARDWARE SETUP

The hardware set up consist of Arduino Uno , Raspberry Pi and a Proximity sensor.

1 . Arduino Uno

Connect the proximity sensor to Arduino Uno and upload the code which serially send data to Raspberry Pi and which send data to Alexa 

                                     Arduino-Proximity

Upload this piece of code to serially send data to Raspberry Pi

int sensor = 5;  int mail=0; void setup() {   pinMode(sensor, INPUT);    Serial.begin(9600); }  void loop() { mail = digitalRead(sensor); if ( mail==1){  Serial.write(1);  } else {  Serial.write(0);    }

2 . Raspberry Pi

Arduino is connected to Raspberry Pi and in my project it also acts as the Alexa device with installed Alexa Voice service ( If you want to check it try it here ) 

Install supporting libraries for Raspberry Pi

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install python2.7-dev python-dev python-pip  sudo pip install Flask flask-ask sudo apt-get install python-seria

                                                  Rapberry pi-Arduino

from flask import Flask  from flask_ask import Ask, statement  import requests  import json  import serial  ser = serial.Serial("/dev/ttyACM0", 9600)  #change here for your serial app = Flask(__name__)  ask = Ask(app, '/')  @ask.launch  @ask.intent("Check")   if (ser.read()==1)    def yes():    return statement("New mail has arrived , Check it soon")   else    def no():      return statement("No mails yet")   if __name__ == "__main__":    app.run(debug=True) 

Run the above python code in Raspberry Pi to send response to alexa 

NGROK

Ngrok opens a secure tunnel to localhost and exposes that tunnel behind an HTTPS endpoint. ngrok makes it so Alexa can talk to your code right away. Set up this way to generate a public HTTPS endpoint to 127.0.0.1:5000

Here you get the latest Linux ARM release as a zip and unzip inside the home directory.

Then go to command line and enter

./ngrok http 5000 

There you get an HTTPS url endpoint . Put the url in alexa skill endpoint .

ALEXA SKILL

1. Create New Alexa Skill

First of all login to amazon developer account here and add a new skill to your Alexa Skill Kit 

                                                            Alexa skill list

2 . Provide necessary Skill Information

Create a new skill in Custom Skill category and supply a Name and Invocation name and Language . Check whether you need Audio player , Video Player or Render Template . Here my skill has got name and invocation name MailBoxChecker.

                                        Skill information

3 . Build the Interaction model

In the interaction model window add Intents , Slots and sample utterances as much as you want. Either you can add inbuilt intents or you can create new intents according to your skill and save the model . The only one intent I have used is check intent .

                                                      Skill builder-Interaction model

4 . Configuration

Select service endpoint type as https and enter the ngrok url as default .

                                      Skill builder-configuration

5 . SSL Certificate

In SSL Certificate section select 'My development endpoint is a sub-domain of a domain that has a wildcard certificate from a certificate authority'.

6 . Test Skill

Now the skill is ready to be enabled . Now test the skill

TEST THE WORKING

Enable the skill in your connected device and Check the working .

Hence the mail box is connected to the internet thus Connectivity  becomes meaningful by means of this project............