Discussion Elite Dangerous Ship Assistant (Amazon's Alexa)

mathwuy

M
Greetings Commanders!

I thought that I should take some time to talk about a recent project I have been building. This project is still a work in progress, but it is much like EDDI and Voice Attack, but instead of all voice interaction being on your computer, it uses Amazon's Alexa to handle all of the ship commands. This project also just won 1st place in a Amazon API Mashup Contest hosted by Amazon on Hackster.io (link to my project page is here)

Here are some current features:
  • Send commands to your ship (Ex. Raise landing gear)
  • EDSM integration to give you information on any star system, even the one you are currently in.
  • Able to read your most recent received message.
  • Utilizes Alexa's built in voice recognition so your commands are properly received.

Here are some planned features:
  • Ability to know if a ship function is currently active.
  • Ability to send you cards through your Alexa companion app to give information as text as well as speech.
  • Integration with dynamic lighting.
  • Improve the flow. (Ex. No reprompt from Alexa)
  • And much more!

I am a 16 year old high school student with great interest in this type of integration and would love to bring it to you guys as soon as possible. The project page is located here. Please read through the whole page, because there are two installation methods; simple does not require coding and advanced does.

Thanks!
CMDR Austin Mathuw

Here is a video of it running:
[video=youtube_share;ScE4ky6_U5k]https://youtu.be/ScE4ky6_U5k[/video]
 

Magic

M
Just saw this today, and find it intriguing & cool!

Now thinking I need to get myself a dot for where I play my games!

LoL!
 

OldCoder

O
This does look very interesting. One problem I have with Voice Attack (and it's because I don't play enough) is I can never remember the exact words I must use per command. For example, is it engines to full power, full power, max power, maximum power etc etc. That's a simple example but hopefully you get what I mean. Does this project allow us to be 'less precise' perhaps in how to ask for something, or can we modify scripts to build up the library of possible requests?

Also I see that Windows 10 is required for some parts of the instructions. I do have a Windows 10 laptop but my gaming rig is Windows 7. Is that sufficient or must the final setup be Win 10?
 

mathwuy

M
OldCoder said:
This does look very interesting. One problem I have with Voice Attack (and it's because I don't play enough) is I can never remember the exact words I must use per command. For example, is it engines to full power, full power, max power, maximum power etc etc. That's a simple example but hopefully you get what I mean. Does this project allow us to be 'less precise' perhaps in how to ask for something, or can we modify scripts to build up the library of possible requests?

Also I see that Windows 10 is required for some parts of the instructions. I do have a Windows 10 laptop but my gaming rig is Windows 7. Is that sufficient or must the final setup be Win 10?
Click to expand...

Alexa, being a powerful tool, can hear less precise phrases and still link to a certain function. That being said, it is possible that if you say "deploy landing gear", she may hear it as "retract landing gear", because two of the three words are similar. There are ways around this and I plan on investigating this weekend.

The code to actually send the messages to Alexa is a Universal Windows App, which requires Windows 10. I am, however, going to look at possibly linking the two programs so they can be run on other versions of windows.

Thanks!
 

texasp8

texasp8
Hi Austin

Your skill is restricted from me (in the U.K.). Is there anyway you can lift that restriction?
 
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mathwuy

M
Future Cortana update and status of the skill migration to the UK.

Vistitor010100 said:
this looks Great.

But I wonder why Cortana in windows 10 could not be also implemented - since I imagine there's many using win 10.

This in no way is saying Anything against Alexia.
Click to expand...

So, I was looking at adding Cortana last night and, in February, Microsoft will be releasing their developer tools for Cortana, including a way to port skills from Alexa. I will try to do this when they release it. This update will make use of "Hey Cortana".

Also, quick update on bringing the skill to the UK. It should be available sometime next week. It's still a work in progress, but you can see my Trello board here to see what I have planned for the future. If you have a feature you want to see added, let me know.

Thanks!
 

Bravesteel

B
I started watching the video, and the grin on my face kept getting bigger and bigger. Well done! My only concern is that I would eventually want to put Alexa in a robot body so that I could punch her in the face for how many times she says "What's next?" is there a way to turn that off?
 

Commander JohnDeere

C
Hope this project turns out to be as awesome as it sounds, I tried to get it going but Windows refused to install it due to some sort of certificate issue. I have an echo dot and desperately look for some sort of use for it other then news briefings and weather. THis skill alone would make it worth it as the echo has great Mics and voice recognition capabilities. Just being able to ask about system information is great! Best wishes towards your project, and Congrats on the award!
 

budstud

budstud
I'm wondering if any of the fine PC CMDRs would share the Elite Dangerous directory location for the journal logs?

I am an Xbox player, but I would like to use CMDR Austin Mathuw's Ship Assistant Alexa skill for the system information it pulls from EDSM.net. I am not a programmer, so I don't expect I will be able to create an Alexa skill that implements just that piece. So I was hoping that I could trick the Ship Assistant skill into thinking I was on PC because it found a generic journal log on my PC. Then I would just use the "Alexa, what do you have on (system)?" command and disregard all of the ship control commands that come with the PC version.

I have no idea if this will work, but I thought I would give it a try. I also got the certificate issue mentioned by CMDR JohnDeere, so it might be a moot point.
 

Exigeous

Exigeous
OldCoder said:
This does look very interesting. One problem I have with Voice Attack (and it's because I don't play enough) is I can never remember the exact words I must use per command. For example, is it engines to full power, full power, max power, maximum power etc etc. That's a simple example but hopefully you get what I mean. Does this project allow us to be 'less precise' perhaps in how to ask for something, or can we modify scripts to build up the library of possible requests?

Also I see that Windows 10 is required for some parts of the instructions. I do have a Windows 10 laptop but my gaming rig is Windows 7. Is that sufficient or must the final setup be Win 10?
Click to expand...

First realize that you can have Voice Attack recognize many difference phrases for the same action, so you could add everything you list for 100% engines.

Now that's only to help as I'm very interested in this as I just setup 3 of the Echo dots around my place. Have them integrated with all the lights, as in every light is a Philips Hue so I can control them all from any device and voice. Also have a Nest so that's linked too. Adding in Elite would just be another cool thing I could do.

I'm curious to get into the code as I wouldn't want it to be so chatty "okay", "what's next", etc. Very cool for a demo but after time it just takes too long to listen to all those prompts. In Elite I turn most of the ship voice responses off, after hearing "4, 3, 2, 1" about a billion times I couldn't take it any more. That said this is a fantastic start and has been said not what I was doing when I was 16!

Hope to set it up in the next day or so and will report back what I think and what I might like to do to help.
 

amcb10

amcb10
This looks like a great help, only thing that would wory me is the lag from issuing a command to it relaying to the PC.

I use VA and it is brilliant and instantanious but you app would be brilliant for those without a mic etc.
 

Schmack

Schmack
Bravesteel said:
I started watching the video, and the grin on my face kept getting bigger and bigger. Well done! My only concern is that I would eventually want to put Alexa in a robot body so that I could punch her in the face for how many times she says "What's next?" is there a way to turn that off?
Click to expand...

Just have her say "aaaand then?" and you can say "no more 'and then'" at which point she says "aaaaaaand theeeeen?"

:D

Great work OP. 16. Wow. I think I'll go to the other end of the universe where I feel better about myself.
 
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mathwuy

M
texasp8 said:
Worth mentioning for anyone still stumbling across this thread that the author has released a version that is newer than the one linked in the original post:

https://github.com/AustinMathuw/Elite_Dangerous_Ship_Assistant/releases

It's a much smaller download, and resolves 'certificate' issues I was having when installing the previous version.
Click to expand...

Thank you for adding this! I plan on updating to take care of the "What's next" and adding more than one possible response to each response back. Also, I'm planning of making the session id a user id, thus eliminating the need to input a new session id every time you play. On more thing, I just released a new skill, Unofficial Elite: Dangerous Wiki. I created a new forum thread for it where you can find more info about it.
Thanks!
CMDR Austin Mathuw
 

dognosh

dognosh
+1 rep mathwuy !!!
I fear though, this brilliant project will not be picked up by many as it is too complicated to setup for the common man.
I have a dot now and at some stage soon will install it :)
 
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