Control an 8x8 pixel LED matrix display Christmas tree with your voice through Amazon Alexa / Echo Dot. It is powered by:
Check out the demo on Youtube (click the image):
The photos/videos barely do any justice to the view, so here's an approximate outline of how the display should look like:
And the flickering candles view:
This project is powered by the following services:
- Amazon Echo (US or UK at the moment)
- If This Than That (IFTTT) and particular the Alexa service for super easy voice commands, and Maker service for super easy HTTP triggers
- resin.io for super easy code deployment to your IoT device, and for publicly accessible device URLs
- Amazon Echo / Echo Dot / other device set up like an Echo
- Raspberry Pi connected to the internet
- SenseHAT for 8x8 LED matrix
If you haven't yet, register to resin.io, log in, and set up a new application for this project. Download the SD card image provided in the resin.io dashboard, flash it on an SD card (more info on that in this Getting Started Guide!)
Assemble your Raspberry Pi 3 + SenseHAT, and boot it from the SD card. If everything goes well, it shows up in your dashboard!
Clone this project to your computer, and push the code to resin.io (see the above mentioned Getting Started Guide for more details). Wait until the device downloads your application update.
In the resin.io dashboard enable the Public Device URL for this device (note the URL down!), and visit the link. Try out the different endpoints mentioned below, see whether the display changes. If it does, you are almost there!
Go to IFTTT, and create three applets for the three triggers, using your verbal phrases and the URL with the different endpoints noted below.
After this, you should be ready to go, just talk to Alexa, and it will talk to your brand new virtual Christmas tree!
/tree: tree view/christmas: candle view/off: clear display
These settings you can modify by setting up an environment variable (in the resin.io dashboard) with a suitable value:
ROTATE: rotating the LED matrix display (so it can be placed down differently). Acceptable values0(default),90,180,270(these mean degrees)
Copyright 2016 Gergely Imreh imrehg@gmail.com
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.