As I take a break from my day job over the holiday season, I often turn to projects that I can use to improve my knowledge or home network; sometimes like this time I achieve both (or should that beBOFH?).
UsingIFTTT I have created a number of recipes that run scripts on my linux server, these scripts could so easily be hosted on my Raspberry Pi and indeed I am very tempted to make it so.
Essentially by uttering commands such as “Alexa, trigger update plex” she wanders off and using a shell script updatesPlex to the latest version, as this was a real pain on Linux this has now gone from a chore to a smug satisfying task.
I decided stopping there would be a crime so I added commands to update & upgrade the Linux virtual machines running on my main Linux server, as well as the host server itself.
With the wind in my sails I turned my attention to teaching her some scanning, and now with two commands‘scan image’ and ‘scan to email’ I can get her to scan, what is also cool as I get her to store the scans inDropbox, I can ask my wife to scan a letter for me when I am out and then get it anywhere in the world with no fuss or hassle for my wife other than her asking Alexa to perform the task. Truly awesome.
I am, I confess a little stuck on my creme-de-la-creme which was to get Alexa to read the scanned letter to me, however at this time it would seem that Amazon have not yet permitted Alexa to read text to the user, so I have the scanOCR’d and sat ready as a text file but II need some progress with Alexa’s capabilities before I can complete, so close. If someone knows a way to achieve the last bit, please drop me a comment
Ciao
Paul