Sky Bro: Weather Observations

Sky Bro is a weather observations Skill for Alexa. It is targeted for skydivers that want to know what the sky conditions are at their favorite dropzone before traveling for a gnarly day of sky shredding!

How to Use SkyBro

When the skill is enabled on your Alexa account, ask weather questions such as:

• Alexa, ask Sky Bro for weather at Sanderson Field
• Alexa, ask Sky Bro for sky conditions at Skydive Chelan on Saturday
• Alexa, open Sky Bro
  • Sky conditions for Skydive Kapowsin tomorrow
  • What is the weather at Bowerman Field for tomorrow?

SkyBro will give an overview of the weather conditions including:

• Wind
• Cloud Coverage
• Flight Rules
• Temperature
• Dew Point
• Adverse Conditions (snow, lightning)

Want to Use SkyBro?

SkyBro is currently in the Beta stage of development. It is a working Alexa Skill but still needs to be thoroughly tested before deployment! If you want to be on the Beta list to use the Skill, feel free to contact me. Contact information can be found on my GitHub profile.

Tools Used

SkyBro relies on the following technologies:

• C#
• Dotnet 6.0 (or use a package manager)
• AWS Lambda
• Alexa Skill Kit
• DynamoDB

My programming environment uses the following:

• VSCode
• Dotnet CLI
• AWS CLI

Setup Environment

Here are some steps to follow to get started from the command line:

1. If not already installed, install the Dotnet 6.0 CLI.

2. Clone the repository and cd into it.

3. Install Amazon.Lambda.Tools Global Tools if not already installed.

    dotnet tool install -g Amazon.Lambda.Tools

If already installed check if new version is available.

    dotnet tool update -g Amazon.Lambda.Tools

4. Run the following commands to build the project.

dotnet build

This repository consists of two .csproj files, one for the testing project and the other for the Lambda. This is wrapped in a .sln file which exists in the root directory of the project. This simply helps rebuild, test, and debug the project faster.

5. Execute unit tests

    dotnet test

How to Deploy to AWS Lambda

The deployment process is automated through GitHub Actions. Upon a successful merge to the main branch, a process will build the new Lambda function and deploy it to AWS!