Hello folks,
I am setting up my first smart home. At this point I have smartthings hub, multisensor and alexa. I have integrated alexa and smartthings (via alexa skills) and alexa even discovered my devices, but in my opinion not everything went very well.
My idea is to force alexa to say loud “someone is next to the front door” after my multisenson (which is installed on front door) will indentify shock. Unfortunatelly I wasn’t able to do it - in alexa app mutisensor only have functionality of open/close, in smartthings app multisensor is ok (I see all functionality) but I can’t see alexa as voice assistant (app only show google assistant and bixby). Could anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?
Best Regards,
Artur
You’re not doing anything wrong, you just can’t assume all functionality translates automatically. You have to carefully research the capabilities of each ecosystem and device.
In your case, the Multisensor is behaving as designed, and Alexa is the culprit. They only import contact sensor capabilities at this point. (It’s a cloud service so this is ALWAYS changing - and maybe they’ll import the vibration capability in the future.) There are ways to work around it - see later.
For voice assistant - Smartthings does not directly import Alexa’s capabilities you have to tell it HOW through strategic use of switches and routines. Most of us use Alexa to ‘trigger’ smarthtings capabilities either by directly manipulating devices (Turn on the living room light) scenes (Turn on Movie Night) or, by creating virtual/synthetic switches in SmartThings, importing those switches into Alexa and then manipulating those virtual switches (Alexa, someone is next to the front door) The virtual switch turning on would then be a signal to SmartThings to do something - such as act as the trigger in an automation. TO get messages back to Alexa to trigger Alexa routines, you can use specific virtual devices that appear to Alexa as a contact sensor but to SmartThings as a switch - so you basically have a manually controlled contact sensor in Alexa that can be a trigger for Alexa routines.
SmartThings does not see echo devices as speakers by default - Amazon chose not to expose that to SmartThings in thier interface. (Again workaround - see later)
You can see where this gets complex fast. Depending on what you want to do, you may be able to get away with a few virtual switches, some alexa routines, and SmartThings Scenes and Automations. But when you want to get really complex stuff to happen, you’ll need a complex rules engine like WebCoRE. It give you a completely programmable interface that can respond to complex states and do things.
So, you’ll probably want voice responses after you tell Alexa to do something, and once you exit the Alexa ecosystem you’re very limited at what Alexa can do. To workaround this, install Tonesto’s EchoSpeaks SmartApp. It makes your echo devices show up in SmartThings as speakers/ music devices and you can send TTS commands to make Alexa speak or control music and directly trigger Alexa routines.
The combination of Alexa, SmartThings, virtual switches/contact sensors, WebCoRE, and Echo Speaks makes a VERY powerful platform where you can basically do whatever you want if you can imagine it.
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If you’re using a Shock sensor (vibration) then you’ll need an app which can work with that sensor and announce it over Alexa. Check out this app which allows you to use shock sensors (vibration) as trigger and send a custom announcement over Alexa (or any compatible audio system): [RELEASE] Door Chimes and Notifications for Doorbells and Sensors
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Hello again,
Thank you for your answers. I honestly say that I am very positively surprised by their comprehensiveness. As you have suggested, I will now delve into the issue of virtual switches and additional applications. If I will figure something out, I will try to describe it to others. Thanks again!
Greetings,
Artur