Amazon Echo

Echo has become our primary means of light control. The fact that a light can be in as many different groups as you like is really nice, too. Everybody who comes to our house likes it.

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Thanks for the self destruct that was fun. Haha

What phrase are you using now to open the garage?

I just say, “Alexa, open the garage door”
 and she’s says ok.

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I get her to open the garage that way probably 85+% of the time
 but: what happens if the garage is open and you say the phrase?

My integration plan will only open it if it’s closed.

Any benefit to using ifttt over the virtual buttons, I can already forsee my wife forgetting to say trigger if I remove the virtual button set up. So far as dumb as it sounds Alexa turn on tv with virtual switches is working great, I’m worried if I remove those I’m gonna hear a ton of grief, and no matter how many times I say just say trigger, she’s gonna say, i don’t like it!

Why would you say the phrase if the door is already open (I mean, unless you’re in testing mode or whatever)?

You’re not going to play unsafe and open the door when you’re not even there physically to manage the security of that space, are you?

I know a lot of people just simply click the button as they’re leaving the driveway and count on their automated system to alert them if it didn’t close, or when they are coming down the street on their way home, but I would never do either.

Every time I leave, I specifically sit there and watch to make sure it actually fully closes, and I wait an extra second to make sure it doesn’t bounce back open or something. If I didn’t do that, how would I know for sure that somebody (or some other type of animal) didn’t jump in while it was closing, and isn’t in there causing havoc? Of course, we have motion detectors, etc, but still. Those mechanisms won’t do anything if the person knows they have 5 minutes to grab this or that and scram, or if it’s an animal going crazy in the garage.

One time, while I was going from the car to the door to the house while letting the garage door close behind me, for some reason, I turned to look back at the closing door, and just at that moment, a cat came in when there was just barely enough room for it to fit under the door. I had to open it up and scare it back out. I could only imagine what may have happened in there if I hadn’t noticed it come in.

Then, I know we can now be alerted to the fact of an open door when we’re gone, but for me, that functionality will only be secondary
not something I will rely on to enable myself to leave 10 seconds faster. It’s just not worth it. I want to know, for sure, that the door is fully closed, and that nothing got in that I don’t want in there before I take off.

Also, when coming down the street on my way home, what if somebody else is there, waiting for me, and pops in right as it’s opening and I don’t see them? They could easily hide somewhere in there and jump out at me after I have pulled the car in and closed the door.

I know these are extreme examples, and most people are going to belittle such concerns, but they do so at their own peril. I could cite plenty of real-world examples where this has actually happened, and I don’t want to ever add to the statistics with my own experience.

p.s. Of course, I may have completely missed the context before this soapbox stand, and if so, I’m truely sorry. I just saw the words, “what happens if the garage is open and you say the phrase?”, and the only thing that came to mind was somebody opening their garage door while they were coming down the street on their way home from work. Exhausted from work, not paying attention to their surroundings, and potentially walking right into a trap. So, in light of my genuine concern, please forgive me if I’m way off.

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If the garage is open I say, “Alexa, close the garage door”

how have you got it set up?

I personally will probably use a mixture of both ifttt and virtual buttons. Some commands will just sound better saying turn on and turn off but others make no sense with the turn on turn off and trigger may sound better.
Whatever keeps you wife happy is what you should do :wink:

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“Sending that to Iftttt”

What is that?

Why can’t she just say “OK” like she does everywhere else?

Has your spouse complained about this response? Is there a way to change Alexa’s reply?

[quote=“sgnihttrams, post:818, topic:6642, full:true”]
Why would you say the phrase if the door is already open (I mean, unless you’re in testing mode or whatever)? [/quote]

Two response here:

First, the security angle: I typically leave with the door open and count on the automated system to close it behind me. Generally though I leave before my wife does, so there’s still someone home until well after the door is close. I sorta have a fail safe there.

Along with that I don’t have an attached garage, so even if they get into the garage they couldn’t get into the house. Finally, I generally don’t have too much valuable stuff in the garage that’s easy to take and worth taking. Like with any security measure it’s always a question of security vs. convenience. For me, given the threat level (ie, the general likelihood that I’ll get robbed in m neighborhood) combined with the value of what would be stolen, I’m comfortable letting the automated system do it’s job.

Second: The “Why would close it if it’s already closed?” angle: The main “living area” of my house does not afford a clear view of the garage doors. Often when I’m ready to go outside and need to get into the garage I’m starting from an area that doesn’t have a easy view. Combine that with kids who are some times outside with the door open, sometimes without, and I have two garage doors so even if I know one of them is outside with the a door open, I don’t know which one.

For this reasons it’s convenient for me to be able to say: “Alexa trigger Chris’ Garage Door Open” when I want to open my door and know it will only open if it’s already closed. It’s just more convenient and easily within my meager programming skills to do. And isn’t home automation all about creating conveniences?

Just want to add that I’m not belittling your concerns
 everyone has different motivators in this situations. A number of different things need to be taken into consideration when a person decided what safety actions he or she is going to take: everything from comfort level, value of property, ability to replace lost property, past experiences (including experiences of friends and family), type of house, type of neighborhood
 plus many, many more I’m sure.

Just because I’m comfortable driving off with my garage door open does not mean the same should apply to ANYONE else. So while I may personally dismiss some of your concerns as not applying to my situation, I’d never begrudge anyone taking the steps that they feel are necessary to ensure their own safety.

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“Close the Garage Door” seems to be more hit and miss for me. I usually get about 75%+ accuracy on that. But that’s not what I was trying to get as with my question. I explained in more detail in my post just previous to this one, but basically I’m looking for a setup where if I say: “Open the Garage Door” and it’s already open, then the system does nothing. Likewise if I say: “Close the Garage Door” but it’s already closed I don’t want to system to trigger the door and open it.

I don’t always have a clear view of my garage doors when I get ready to leave the house, so I can’t always determine easily if the door is already open because one of the kids left it open.

Imagine if you had a light left on in the basement of your house occasionally and you wanted to turn if off. But no matter what you said to Alexa: “Turn off the light” or “Turn on the light” she would just always toggle the current state. You’d always have to check if the light was on or off before asking her to do anything.

Obviously sometimes you’d know: “I just walked up from the basement and I KNOW the light was on and I was the last one down there.” Or: “I just woke up and everyone else in the family is asleep still, I want to go downstairs
 I can reasonably be sure the light if off.” But many times you wouldn’t know for sure if the light was on or off already. Having a “toggle-only” option then reduces convenience at lot.

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Pretty sure the System doing nothing is a SmartThings issue, not an Echo issue. SmartThings itself won’t send an on message for a switch that it thinks is already on. This causes a lot of synchronization issues.

I think it’s one of the main reasons for the popularity of virtual momentary switches once you start dealing with external control systems like echo. It cleans up the status sync issue on the SmartThings side.

I don’t believe the echo knows the status of any of your devices, so it just sends whatever you request over to SmartThings. That’s where the evaluation takes place about what to perform (or not). :sunglasses:

If I simply say “Alexa, close the garage door” - she will add close the garage door to my to-do list. Same result with other commands I’ve issued without specifically stating “trigger”.

Am I correct in assuming you guys are getting her to execute without using the “trigger” keyword? If so, please explain.

I received an online survey request from the Echo folks a few weeks back, apparently I’ve enough HA junk going on that they’ve scheduled an in home interview with me next week.
How cool is that?
And I get $100 amazon card for the effort, which I’ll turn around and use to get more HA junk


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I really appreciate your well thought-out response. You were obviously speaking from the heart and not negative toward me or my ideas at all. What a refreshing place to have these kinds of discussions! Thanks, man. :slight_smile:

At the risk of being too persistent on this point, I would like to poke at one tiny portion of what you said (obviously, not as a poke at you)


Now, of course, I’m not seeing your real, actual scenario at home, but taking just the words as stated, and imagining my own version of your setting, etc


In this scenario, let’s see if I have this correct


Step 1. you leave without actually watching the opening of the garage door all the time that it is going down in order to make sure that you know it is fully closed before turning your eyesight away from it.

Step 2. the door (hopefully) closes sometime after you are out of sight (not saying how long, just that it is after you are out of sight)

Step 3. your wife comes out to the garage sometime after the above, and when she gets there, the garage is closed (normally anyway) and she can’t see inside of the garage

Now, let me add one more thing into the mix which was not part of your description.
This added component happens between steps 1 and 2 above (so I’ll call it step 1.5)


Step 1.5 an unknown/unwelcome/unwanted person sneaks into the garage just as it is closing, and nobody ever sees them go in, because your wife is either still asleep or in the shower or whatever, and you took off before the garage door was fully closed.

Now, I’m going to add a step after the one above where your wife goes to the garage


Step 4. Now your wife is inside of the garage with the person that entered it in step 1.5 above.

Again, this is an extreme scenario, and will most likely never happen. I get that.
However, in light of how I am imagining the setting and scenario, it is entirely possible.

Of course, you could say that your wife is former military, secrete special teams operative, with karate/jujitsu and a wicked firearm habit and she’d probably be able to take care of herself just fine.

In my case, even though that is true, I would absolutely never, never, never do such a thing and potentially leave the garage vulnerable to that kind of intrusion, and potentially leave my wife in that kind of situation where she is actually forced into self-defense mode like that.

Again, not arguing here
only discussing for the sake of sharing ideas, and learning from you how you think about things, and what kinds of differences there may be in the scenario that I could benefit from.

Does this admittedly, wildly-imagined scenario fit in any way whatsoever?

Could it happen? Yes, absolutely. Entirely possible. I guess I just put it at a low enough level that the inconvenience of waiting for the garage to close is a bigger issue.

That might sound very cold (Your wife’s well being is less important than being inconvenience for a few seconds?!?!?), but in my opinion we make these decisions on a regular basis everyday. There are hundreds
 thousands of things we do daily that effect our personal security as well as that of our loved ones. Everything from what type of car we decide to drive to why type of door we put on our houses.

I have a co-worker who is fond of saying: “If I ever wanted to break into a new home, I’d just kick through the walls. The materials used these days aren’t generally solid enough to with-stand a few solid repeated blows.” How true that is is up for debate of course, but the point is that our houses are not fortresses. They can be breached relatively easily if someone was really determined to get in.

We all take reasonable measure to prevent easy access, but short of living in a bank vault, there’s really no way to make it impossible for someone really determined to break it. Depending on your own comfort level combined with your area, the ability of you and your family to handle a situation
 you make appropriate decisions.

For example, I know some people who have bars over their windows. Because of the area in which they live they feel it’s necessary. They might question someone who doesn’t have bars: “What, you don’t want to give up one month of cable service so you can afford security for your family? Or is it that a clear view of the outside is more important you than you child not getting murdered?”

I have a z-wave lock on my side door. I know this opens up one more threat area for my house
 Someone might hack into my SmartThings and figure out how to open it. Someone might use binoculars and watch one of my family punching in the code. It raises the threat to my house security some level, but the convenience of my kids being able to get in when they come home from school or my wife not having to take a key with her when she goes on walks with the dog
 those make the slight added risk worth in my opinion.

Again, very much to each their own here
 you have to do what you are comfortable with and no one can say you’re stupid to spend the extra time, money, whatever, to get that added security that you want/need. Well, I might question you a bit if you wall your house with armor plating, hire 24-hour security guards and have a 10’ high fence with razor wire around it
 but you get the idea. If you can afford the measure you want to take and they aren’t totally crazy
 then who am I to say you’re being too cautious or worried?

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Dang
 that’s pretty sweet! How do I sign up for that?!? :smile:

Don’t know, email just showed up


[quote=“chrisb, post:828, topic:6642, full:true”]
Could it happen? Yes, absolutely. Entirely possible. I guess I just put it at a low enough level that the inconvenience of waiting for the garage to close is a bigger issue.

That might sound very cold (Your wife’s well being is less important than being inconvenience for a few seconds?!?!?), but in my opinion we make these decisions on a regular basis everyday. [/quote]

I don’t think your response sounds cold at all in any way shape or form. I suspect you are probably the kind and caring sort of person I’d feel safer around. However, if I were my wife, and heard me saying it, I would wonder why, when in every other possible way in life, I always have her well-being in mind, I would not be willing to wait an extra 10 seconds (my garage door closes in less than that) for the sake of preventing even the slightest possibility of such a scenario.

Now, if it were into the minute-zone or something, I might be getting close to reconsidering the value of my time (though, my reaction would probably be to fix the situation instead of recalculate the time factor
it is just not acceptable, in my case, to leave the door open when I leave like that in the morning
ever), but ten seconds?

As for all of the little decisions we make all day every day, yep. I totally agree. There are also all kinds of things that are out of our control, and/or which we can’t afford to do anything about, or which we maybe just haven’t thought of yet.

However, in this case, I have thought about it, and it’s not at all complicated (extreme and outlandish perhaps, but certainly not complicated to wait that extra 10 seconds).

Agree too though that it’s a matter of to each their own. I really don’t mean to be singling you out, or pointing at you as if you’re doing something ‘wrong’. It just could never work in my setting. That said, if I bought your house and moved into your house in your neighborhood, I’d wait ten seconds. :slight_smile:

I had my Echo hooked up to my Harmony through the virtual switches in IFTTT. Yesterday morning, I finally had some time to change it to use the SmartApp for Harmony Triggers. And then just a few hours later I saw the update. Pissed at first for the time spent on the Triggers app, but then tried it and it is SO easy.

Amazing what Alexa does.

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