The Internet of Things is still a very burgeoning market but it’s already capable of some pretty amazing things. One only needs to look at the Amazon Echo speaker and the Alexa software that’s behind it to get just a taste of what individuals can do with the technology. While most people might be dreaming of having Alexa turn down the temperature or ordering them a pizza from Dominos, one developer has used Amazon’s Echo speaker to dream a little bigger than a cooler home and a hot slice of pie. Developer Jason Goecke has created a command that can essentially control his Tesla Model S.
To be clear, the Echo isn’t driving the Model S per se, rather it’s just pulling the car out of the garage. Nonetheless, it’s an impressive accomplishment in the world of development that came out of a weekend project. In the video below you can see all of the action. Those who are familiar with the Amazon Echo and the Alexa software will know that it requires the user to initiate the tasks via trigger words. For this particular task Goecke appropriately set it up so that he could ask Alexa to pull the Model S out of the garage when using the name “KITT” to refer to the car. Saying “Alexa, ask KITT to pull the car out of the garage” initiates the command and you can see the Echo speaker begin to process Goecke’s request.
Using a combination of the Amazon Echo speaker, AWS Lamda, Tesla Golang library code that Goecke recently published on GitHub, the Tesla Model S, and even a drone to record the whole thing from just outside the garage, Goecke was able to make everything happen. He notes that the technology to make it all work is in the cloud, and he mentions that he might even push this project further by adding security measures like voice biometrics and computer vision to prevent the command from being initiated by anyone but himself. The idea of being able to use the cloud and a few pieces of technology to complete tasks such as this one is a testament to how far technology has come in such a short time, and while it might have been a fun project for Goecke to complete it also serves as a way to encourage Tesla to work more with the community of developers through a public API that’s safe and fully supported, which could open up the technology for many more possibilities like this one.