Finances: Marvin’s first skills

With Marvin’s core architecture designed, I started developing the framework.  The framework itself is intended to handle multiple use cases, from supporting personal information to provide contextual experiences to controlling devices.  Marvin’s key differentiator is that it is powered by data, rather than a simple trigger based on an action.  This is why the core of the framework contains APIs that handle data and extends itself into building out analytics.  Behind the scenes exists an ETL process that feeds into various services, including machine learning.

I’ve been feeding the last 7 years of financial data through to Marvin’s core databases, with just over 9000 transactions. The transactions look something like this:

Date Description Original Description Amount Transaction Type Category Account Name
6/22/2017 Ooma OOMA, INC 08887116662 CA XX.XX debit Home Phone Smart Cash Platinum Plus MasterCard
6/22/2017 Costco COSTCO WHOLESALE W159 AJAX ON XX.XX debit Home Supplies Smart Cash Platinum Plus MasterCard
6/21/2017 Transfer to Chequing TRANSFER OUT XX.XX debit Transfer General Savings
6/21/2017 Transfer from General Savings TRANSFER IN XX.XX credit Transfer Chequing
6/20/2017 Costco COSTCO WHOLESALE W1128 OSHAWA ON XX.XX debit Groceries Smart Cash Platinum Plus MasterCard
6/20/2017 Costco WWW COSTCO CA 905-264-8337 ON XX.XX debit Sporting Goods Smart Cash Platinum Plus MasterCard
6/20/2017 Taunton Endo TAUNTON ENDO OSHAWA ON XX.XX debit Doctor Smart Cash Platinum Plus MasterCard

These transactions provide a very good base for generating some initial learning models. By including credit or debit, dates, retailers, amounts, categories for purchases and labels, it enables various types of skills to be identified.  These skills help me understand my finances better while also helping me improve.

Continue reading…

Marvin: Automating my Smart Home Devices

Part of the process of designing Marvin is to carefully ensure that all devices within my home fit well into the ecosystem.  I severely underestimated the time it would take to carefully plan out each part of my ecosystem.

I’ve started buying and implementing smart home / IoT devices over the last year or so. The devices were implemented with the idea that they will all be managed a central device / hub in the future.  For a while, my hub of choice was the Wink Hub. But as smart home hubs evolved, SmartThings continued to get better.  While Wink is a terrific hub, SmartThings allows for far more complex automation routines or even create your own SmartApp.

While the hub itself was a difficult choice, the other devices were not a whole lot simpler unfortunately.  For one, I’ve been avoiding maintenance costs, as some devices have, like Nest Cams. Secondly, I tend to go for devices that support Windows devices as much as Android and iOS. Thirdly, the devices need to be user friendly enough that I would enjoy tinkering with it. Lastly, I try to choose devices that have mostly favorable reviews.  For devices to meet all 4 requirements has been surprisingly difficult.

Continue reading…

Marvin – Personalized and Smart Virtual Assistant

Over the last two years, I’ve been buying into Internet of Things (IoT) devices. While the devices themselves may be smart, they do not make a smart home.  In comes Marvin.  Unlike many who have gone for Jarvis as a name, I chose the name Marvin from Hitchhiker’s Guild to the Galaxy. Marvin has a brain the size of a planet, which is fitting considering the information it will be processing.
Continue reading…