Skills and Chills

Hey Folks! Hope all is well, some good stuff to share tonight! Lets get to it...

Intents

I submitted the Alexa app to Amazon for approval earlier today.  It can take up to 7 days for the skill to be publicly available. 

While cleaning the app up for the submission, I realized I suddenly understood the Alexa dev stack way better than I did when planning the original app. It was one of those random moments where your brain reaches saturation and it all finally clicks. So I added a bunch of new intents beyond the original "Coffee Now" functionality.

You can check some of the new intents out in this quick video:

The nice thing is that all the information is provided by the Cloud Control API, so it will be super easy to implement the same functionality across all types of devices.

Shipping Update 

Our single international shipment has been stuck in UK customs for a few days now. We have not yet received a reason. It is probably something simple, possibly related to duties or the packing slip. I need to know if it's something preventable so we can adjust the process and move forward. If it's not preventable, we need to know how to plan around it. The main issue right now is that they are slow to respond and light on answers. I expect it to be resolved over the next couple of days and we will jump from there.

The only other issue was related to how the boiler and water reservoir were packaged. It was throwing us out of our shipping rate sizing restrictions. This has been resolved and I'll be sending out some new packaging tomorrow.

Once the customs issue is resolved we will be good to start shipping in bulk. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll have an answer by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.

QR Codes Seem Kind Of Dumb

But also not dumb. For very specific use cases. Sometimes.

Linky Codey

Mugsy has a couple of use cases where are QR code might come in handy. Say you want to share recipes between unlinked or offline machines. A common example would be sending recipes from your work machine back to your home base. Depending on configuration, the Mugsy in your office may have no idea that you have a machine at home. So just snap a pic of the recipes QR code and send it to your Cloud Control account or directly to your machine and you are good to go. It can also be used to link a machine to your cloud account or vice versa, as in the above example pic.

This functionality already existed without the QR codes. This is only meant to be a usability improvement by removing the need for copy/pasting or entering long id numbers.

You can currently access a QR code with your Machine ID embedded in it on your cloud control dashboard.

oAuth Reminder

Did you miss the last update? If so, be sure to create a new account using Cloud Control's new oAuth setup. You can access it here: https://cloud.heymugsy.com/v2/

Cloud Control DB Schema

Is available here: https://github.com/margyle/MugsyDev/tree/master/cloudcontrol/db

I'm tweaking the recipe tables a bit so will push an update when completed.

Ok, thats it for tonight. I am going to Philly this weekend to see Refused play so I may be slow to respond to support requests. The next update will be on Monday or Tuesday. If there is movement with the custom's issue before then, I will update sooner.

Thanks and hope all is well!

Cheers,

-m