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“What we will explore on this tutorial, is how to use Alexa, an intelligent personal assistant developed by Amazon Lab126, made popular by the Amazon Echo and Echo-Dot. Alexa is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, and other real time information. Alexa can also control several smart devices using itself as a home automation hub. We will use on this project, the “Echo-Dot”, that allows users to activate the device using a wake-word (such as “Alexa”). In the home automation space, Alexa can interact with several different devices as Philips Hue, Belkin Wemo, SmartThings, etc. In our case, we will emulate the WeMo. WeMo is a series of products from Belkin International, Inc. that enables users to control home electronics from anywhere. The product suite includes a switch, motion sensor, Insight Switch, light switch, camera and app. The WeMo Switch (our case here) can be plugged into any home outlet, which can then be controlled from an iOS or Android smartphone running the WeMo App, via home WiFi or mobile phone network.”

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