Freedom Buttons replays Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's 'I Have a Dream' poem on Alexa while lighting up Echo Buttons as candles.
Freedom Buttons logo, two freedom doves. https://amzn.to/2Ds2Qr1
"Alexa, ask freedom buttons to replay his poem"
Freedom Buttons replays ‘I Have a Dream’ on Alexa. A listener can replay Dr. King’s speech in entirety or short remarks. While replaying the poem, Alexa will light Echo Buttons as candles. The skill is free to use. To listen, say “Alexa, ask freedom buttons to replay his poem.”
"Alexa, ask freedom buttons to commemorate dr martin luther king jr day"
"Alexa, ask freedom buttons to recite the remark free at last"
A listener can replay short portions. For example, a listener can ask Alexa to recite the poetic remark “free at last.” Free at last is one of the most moving passages I have ever heard and is spoken like a song. Other passages available: “let freedom ring,” “we cannot walk alone,” “whirlwinds of revolt,” “now is the time,” and “justice for all.”
Candle color palette displayed on buttons
Historically, during controversial years, action was taken against individuals and groups who disseminated recordings of ‘I Have a Dream.’ The skill is named ‘Freedom Buttons’ to honor the freedom we have to publish voice apps that replay the recording.
Freedom doves svg
The logo, an illustration of two freedom doves, is in the public domain. I used Adobe Cloud’s Illustrator to create two resized copies.
Freedom Buttons shows pictures in the Alexa App
Freedom Buttons shows pictures of people who supported the civil rights movement. The pictures are black and white because photography was mostly monochrome in that era. On the project, I used Adobe Cloud’s Photoshop to resize them. Alexa will display the pictures in the Alexa app or on devices with screens.
Freedom Buttons shows pictures on the Echo Show
To create short mp3s of memorable remarks, I converted spliced clips to an Alexa friendly format with the free FFMpeg. Freedom Button plays shorter clips when a customer asks listen to a portion of the poem.
Freedom Buttons is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 and AWS Lambda. AWS CloudFormation generates the infrastructure stack, driven by a hand written Serverless Application Model template. AWS Code Pipelines automates deployment.
I kept track of project todo’s with a free copy of Atlassian’s JIRA project management software.
Thank You
The media in Freedom Buttons such as the pictures and recordings are available in the public domain. Thank you to the individuals and institutions that provide them to the public: The National Archives https://www.archives.gov, Wikipedia https://www.wikipedia.org, and Pixabay https://pixabay.com. Thank you to Amazon https://www.amazon.com for permitting customers to listen to a historical recording with Alexa while lighting up candles. Thank you to The King Center http://www.thekingcenter.org for providing information about his poem.
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