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How I ended up automating my curtains and shouting at my laptop

Luke Bonaccorsi - @LukeB_UK

Software Engineer

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@LukeB_UK

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I’m lazy

@LukeB_UK

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Because I’m lazy, automation is a good thing

@LukeB_UK

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In everyday life we’re surrounded by automation and probably don’t realise

@LukeB_UK

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Traffic lights

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Automatic doors

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Motion sensing lights

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Automatic hand driers

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Cash machines

@LukeB_UK

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And that’s just the stuff I noticed and paid attention to today...

@LukeB_UK

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As consumers, we're embracing automation in our homes

@LukeB_UK

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Heating

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Lighting

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Access control

@LukeB_UK

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These usually have APIs so you can interact with them

@LukeB_UK

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We also use automation to make our jobs easier

@LukeB_UK

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Build tooling

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Tests

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Infrastructure configuration

@LukeB_UK

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As interesting as that stuff can be, I’m not here to talk about that

@LukeB_UK

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Over the past couple of years there’s been a “bot uprising”

@LukeB_UK

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They're quickly becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives

@LukeB_UK

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Release token

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Personalised news

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Ordering food

@LukeB_UK

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These can be hooked directly to a chat system

@LukeB_UK

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There are frameworks that make it easy to build a bot

@LukeB_UK

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And then there's Github’s Hubot

@LukeB_UK

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Deploying code

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Provisioning hardware

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Visitor wrangling

@LukeB_UK

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Even controlling the music!

@LukeB_UK

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We now have virtual assistants!

@LukeB_UK

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They’re in our homes and help us with our everyday lives

@LukeB_UK

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It’s quite easy to add your own abilities

@LukeB_UK

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And the uprising is only just beginning

@LukeB_UK

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In mid-2014 I started working on a chatbot

@LukeB_UK

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It’s called Woodhouse

@LukeB_UK

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It’s modular and extensible

@LukeB_UK

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It's open source and written in JavaScript

@LukeB_UK

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In the beginning I only wanted to download movies...

@LukeB_UK

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Before I did that, I automated my lamps instead

@LukeB_UK

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@LukeB_UK

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@LukeB_UK

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I use this every day

@LukeB_UK

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Then I began adding other little bits

@LukeB_UK

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I started having these wild ideas of getting it to control everything

@LukeB_UK

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...But then decided to rewrite it all instead

@LukeB_UK

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The first time I gave a version of this talk I wanted something new

@LukeB_UK

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@LukeB_UK

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@LukeB_UK

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@LukeB_UK

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There’s so much cool stuff for JavaScript and hardware

@LukeB_UK

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Johnny-Five

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Cylon.js

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Espruino

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Tessel

@LukeB_UK

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Eventually I got bored over christmas and started shouting at my laptop

@LukeB_UK

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@LukeB_UK

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Offline hotword detection

(npm.im/snowboy)

Google Speech API

@LukeB_UK

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That’s the story so far

@LukeB_UK

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So what about the future?

@LukeB_UK

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I am genuinely terrified of the prospect of home ownership

@LukeB_UK

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At the start of this talk I said I was lazy.�Let me correct that

@LukeB_UK

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I’m the stupid kind of lazy where I’ll spend hundreds of hours making things so I don’t have to do simple tasks

@LukeB_UK

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But it goes further than that

@LukeB_UK

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I’m not here just to show off all the stuff I’ve built

@LukeB_UK

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I’m here with the aim of inspiring you

@LukeB_UK

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I’ve learned so much while working on this

@LukeB_UK

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I kept going down the rabbit hole

@LukeB_UK

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@LukeB_UK

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If you were learning to cook, you’d make stuff you want to eat

@LukeB_UK

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Build something that’s weird and interesting to you

@LukeB_UK

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Thank you!

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Come say hello and chat!

Twitter: @LukeB_UK

Github: github.com/lukeb-uk

Woodhouse: github.com/woodhouse

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@LukeB_UK