Alexa Smart Home Development
Create a Smarter Home with Alexa
If you decide to connect your devices to Alexa over the internet, you’ll use the Alexa Skills Kit and the Smart Home Skill API to build your skill. Alexa is based in the cloud so she’s always getting smarter and customers never have to download updates to your skill. In addition, you can build and host most skills for free with AWS Lambda, which is free for the first one million calls per month. You can also apply for AWS promotional credits if you incur AWS charges related to your skill.
The Alexa Skills Kit is a collection of self-service APIs, tools, documentation, and code samples that makes it fast and easy for anyone to add skills to Alexa. The Smart Home Skill API provides a built-in voice user interface that simplifies the process of enabling customers to control cameras, entertainment devices, lighting, locks, thermostats, and more with Alexa.
Find detailed information about authentication, messaging, directives and other aspects of the Smart Home Skill API.
Refer to the full Alexa Skills Kit technical documentation for guides on using the custom skill API and other development platform and features.
Visit our forums to get inspired, ask and answer questions, and join our Alexa developer community.
Our test tools allow you to exercise your skill using text input or voice input from a computer. You can also invite users to a beta that you control. Once you’ve integrated your skill with your devices and device cloud, you can test your solution end to end.
Test your Alexa skill using the Test Simulator. Simply input text or use voice to interact with your skill.
Test your user experience using Echosim. This online community tool simulates the experience of an Amazon Echo.
Invite up to 500 beta users to test your Alexa skill and provide feedback. You choose the users and supply them with your smart devices.