Inspiration
Most people are out of home for at lease eight hours every day. We care about if we miss any visitor or if there are strangers lingering around in the daytime. Most home monitoring devices or security cameras in the market just record everything and doesn't process or provide useful information to users.
What it does
We create a Smart-Home Monitor app controlled by voice via Amazon Echo and Alexa. When the house owner is out, the system will automatically detect if there is any person around, and record a video clip until the person left. When the owner is back, he could ask Alexa how many visitors came by and show the videos by audio instructions.
Our Smart-Home Monitor app only captures scenarios that tenants care about and provide users with keypoint information and videos. With the use of Amazon Echo and Alexa, our app provides powerful functionalities with easy-to-use audio instructions.
How we built it
We use Firebase for synchronizing data between Alexa and webcam app. We use Python and OpenCV for recording, saving and showing the videos.
Challenges we ran into
- Alexa API Firstly, we have difficulties figuring out when exactly the onLaunch(), onIntent(), and onSessionEnded() being called, and we test it for a long time. Then we try to connect the lambda to the database, but there are some RESTful APIs that are not well-documented and we spent some time to figure it out .
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Successfully build Alexa skills, and synchronize data between webcam app on the laptop and Alexa lambda.
What's next
- Recognize the identities of captured people.
- Connect to other cameras like Kinect or Nest cams.
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