Automate Blinds Opening by Alexa and Ev3

Idea

I had already considered implementing this idea before the competition. Not with the Echo device, which was a good addition to the project.

I wanted to implement automatic opening of the blinds with speech recognition.

Crafting the idea

First I manually tested how the Ev3 engines could pull up the blinds. Testing worked and I started to build the experiment further and it worked somehow.

Getting the Echo devise

I didn't have an Echo device before so I decided to ask at my workplace Slack chat if there was something to lend me the device. I borrowed a device, but I quickly decided to buy my own device, which was Amazon ECHO Show 5 used one.

Learning Alexa development

I had no previous experience with Alexa products or development environments. I started to read and make model examples of what Amazon was challenging. I learned a lot as I tested the idea. I really liked the GUI of the Alexa skill service.

Building

When I had a basic understanding of how Alexa's development environment worked, thanks for the examples. I started building a prototype.

My fist idea was working fine but there was issue with the blinds rope.

So I made some fixing.

After the first iteration I got a better result. The only issue was the controller unit hung so I had to make a new version which was final.

I had good time with my daughter to build the rope puller.

End result

I made some video to show case the experiment 😊 Luckily it was sunny that day because in Finland this time of year is rarely sunny. 🌞🇫🇮