When I was growing up some of my family insisted on giving me savings bonds for things like Christmas and my birthday, in what I assume is was a frugal way to teach me about very (very) delayed gratification. I still have a bunch, but the value isn't particularly high and the process of checking their value is tedious, so I generally only end up checking it maybe every five years or so. I figured it…

This is part eight of the Building a Voice-Driven TV Remote series: Getting The Data Adding Search The Device API Some Basic Alexa Commands Adding a Listings Search Command Starting to Migrate from HTTP to MQTT Finishing the Migration from HTTP to MQTT Tracking Performance with Application Insights In the last part I vastly improved the performance of the app by switching from HTTP to MQTT. With that in place, the next step I wanted to…

This is part seven of the Building a Voice-Driven TV Remote series: Getting The Data Adding Search The Device API Some Basic Alexa Commands Adding a Listings Search Command Starting to Migrate from HTTP to MQTT Finishing the Migration from HTTP to MQTT Tracking Performance with Application Insights In the last post of the series I introduced a MQTT bridge to connect my Harmony system with Azure IoT, so now it's time to switch things over…

This is part six of the Building a Voice-Driven TV Remote series: Getting The Data Adding Search The Device API Some Basic Alexa Commands Adding a Listings Search Command Starting to Migrate from HTTP to MQTT Finishing the Migration from HTTP to MQTT Tracking Performance with Application Insights After a much longer hiatus than I'd hoped to take from this project, I'm finally getting a chance to dive back in! One of the main things I've…

Last week I had the pleasure of chatting with Jesse Liberty on Yet Another Podcast about a variety of topics, ranging from Azure Functions, Alexa skills, Azure Mobile Center, F#, and more. Check it out here: Yet Another Podcast – #168: Greg Shackles Enjoy!…