The main goal of this instructable to use Alexa's voice commands with an Amazon Echo to control the GPIO on a Raspberry Pi using Python. This instructable has been adapted from the Memory Game example at Flask-Ask: A New Python Framework for Rapid Alexa Skills Kit Development.

An Echo is not required but is highly recommended. This is a very simple example but demonstrates how easy it is to expose the Raspberry Pi's functionality to Alexa with just a few lines of Python.

The main reason I am writing this is because I could not find a similar guide elsewhere and felt the functionality was cool enough that it deserved one. There are currently several different ways of adding custom Smart Home programming to Alexa but as far as I know this is the first method using Raspberry Pi and Python.