Alexa, meet Squeezebox

Since my Amazon Dot arrived, I've been smitten. A little like how I didn't think I'd use a smart watch until I bought a Fossil Founder, I though voice control a gimmick until I started playing with Alexa. In the past few days I've been toying with the idea of building full Alexa control of my squeezebox based whole-house audio system. Here's what I've managed so far. It's a basic proof of concept but it does work;

This comprises a very basic LMS plug-in which links the local squeeze server software to the cloud-based skill. The skill is written using Node-RED with a mySQL database in the background.  I'm really growing to love Node-RED more and more and it seems ideal for flow-based functionality like an Alexa skill. Here's the current flow that drives the demo in the video;

There's still a long way to go but so far this is promising and a blast to put together.