Get a step-by-step guide for developing voice interfaces for applications and devices connected to the Internet of Things. By allowing consumers to use natural human interactions, you can avoid awkward methods of input and interactivity to provide them with elevated user experiences. This practical book is ideal for software engineers who build applications for the Web, smartphones, as well as embedded systems that dominate the IoT space. • Integrate voice interfaces with internet connected devices and sensors • Learn how to integrate with existing voice interfaces • Understand when to use a voice over other Natural User Interface technologies • Build a prototype with tools such as Raspberry Pi, solderless breadboards, jumper cables, sensors, Arduino, Visual Studio, and other tools • Use cloud services such as Azure and AWS to integrate voice with your existing or new web service end-points Cover 1 Copyright 4 Table of Contents 5 Preface 9 Who Should Read This Book 9 Conventions Used in This Book 10 O’Reilly Safari 10 How to Contact Us 11 Acknowledgments 11 Chapter 1. Introduction to Voice Interfaces and the IoT 13 Welcome to a NUI World 14 Voice All the Things! 15 What Is NLP? 17 Speech-to-Text (STT) 18 Text-to-Speech (TTS) 19 PLS, SSML, and Other Acronyms 19 Experience Design 22 Purpose 23 One-Off Versus Conversational 23 Conversation Flows 24 Sample Utterances 26 Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) 27 When to Use Visual Cues 31 Additional Design Considerations 32 Decisions, Decisions... 33 Chapter 2. Existing APIs and Libraries 35 Amazon Alexa 35 Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) 37 Alexa Voice Service (AVS) 38 Amazon Lex 41 Amazon Polly 42 Microsoft Cognitive Services, Cortana, and More 43 Google Cloud Speech API 44 Other Notable Services 45 Technical Architecture 47 Conceptual Architecture 47 Application Architecture 49 Conclusion 52 Chapter 3. Getting Started with AVS 53 Tools and Things 54 Preparing Your Pi 54 Amazon AVS Configuration 59 Navigating the Amazon Developer Console 59 AVS Setup 62 Get the Code! 63 But How Does It All Work? 66 Working with a Button and LEDs 68 What’s in the Resources Directory? 69 Customizing the Success Page 69 Deeper Look at the AVS Requests 70 Conclusion 72 Chapter 4. Iterate: Evolve the Prototype 75 Why Iterate? 75 Intents, Utterances, Slots, and Invocation Names 75 Amazon Alexa Requests and Responses 77 Create Your Own API 78 Alexa “Hello, World” in Node.js 78 Amazon Developer Portal 85 Testing Custom Skills on Your Device 93 What’s Next? 94 Account Linking 95 State Management 95 Bigger Picture 95 Chapter 5. A Different Approach Using IoT Core and API.AI 97 IoT Core 98 Tools and Things 99 Preparing Your Pi 99 Welcome to API.AI 105 Building an API.AI Agent 106 Building Our UWP App 116 The Plan 116 The Code 117 Deploying and Testing 126 What’s Next? 127 Chapter 6. What Else Can We Do? 129 Adding More Inputs 130 Going to Production 134 Security Concerns 135 Quality Management 136 Support 137 What’s Next? 139 Index 141 About the Authors 146 Colophon 146
