10/29/18
This week I have a challenging research task: figuring out how to hook up an Alexa controlled LED light. I’ve done some looking around with smart home products and Bluetooth, but circled back to Arduino, something I found out about in the beginning of the semester but never got around to looking into. There are some tutorials that demonstrate linking Arduino to Alexa, but I will need an Arduino circuit board and some mini LEDs to get this going. For now, I will start on the code and do more research on LED linking tutorials. For my prototype, I’d at least like to have one LED hooked up and controlled by Alexa by simply saying, “on” or “off”. I want to continue researching Arduino and its capabilities before I decide on any hardware or look into anything else. This just might be what I’m looking for. The biggest remaining question is how the spice rack will know where each spice is on the rack. Also, I wonder if I have the coding ability necessary to put this all together on the backend.