Using Amazon Alexa to Control Custom IoT Gadgets

Integrating Voice Recognition for Smart Home Projects

- Brian Millier

After purchasing an Echo smart speaker, Brian explores ways to control custom IoT gadgets by integrating Alexa voice recognition into an ESP32 board through an Arduino cloud service. In the first part of a two-part journey, he describes different methods, one through emulation and the second through custom integration. Both help him control his heat pump remotely.

I've built several custom IoT gadgets for my home which generally didn't require an outside cloud service host. While heavily promoted, I hadn't purchased any voice-enabled Amazon Echo devices, even though I have an Amazon Prime subscription.

However, when these Echo devices went on sale for about half-price, I ordered one of the better Echo smart speakers figuring it would have good enough sound quality for music listening, if nothing else. I was quite impressed with the Echo and a compatible smart plug and power receptacle that I also ordered at the time. In this article I'll refer to the Echo device and Alexa, the underlying cloud-based voice recognition engine, interchangeably.

Right from the start I was impressed at the ease of setup of the Echo device as well as how easy it was to pair them with the smart plugs/receptacle. I was also impressed with the Echo's ability to understand my voice. It seemed to understand virtually any of the phrases that I spoke. It didn't appear to make much difference how far I was away from the Echo, when issuing commands. It even seemed to ignore extraneous sounds, such as the TV being on, while I was speaking. I went through the Alexa voice "training" process initially, but Alexa was equally able to understand my wife, who has not done this "training" procedure.