Echo announce only in certain SHM state?

[ricva]

Hi - I have my house alarm sensors connected through Konnected to Smartthings to my Echo Show. I have created a routine where I can get Alexa to announce when a door opens. My question is if there is a way to get Alexa to announce conditionally based on the status of SHM (Armed Away, Armed Stay,
or Disarmed)?

In other words, for example, can I configure the Echo to only have Alexa announce a door opening if SHM is in an Armed state and not announce if SHM is disarmed?

Thanks!

[TonyFleisher]

Yes, but it requires some custom code:
https://community.smartthings.com/t/release-echo-speaks-v3-actions/173073

[JDRoberts]

You can also do it without echospeaks by triggering your echo routine from a virtual sensor, and then using logic on the smartthings side to determine when you want the virtual sensor to report.

See the FAQ (The topic title is a clickable link)

FAQ: Can I trigger an Echo Action without Speaking to It?

Breaking News!!! As of August 2018, a SmartThings-connected Contact or Motion Sensor can now trigger an Amazon echo routine if you live in the US, Canada, or the UK !!! Amazon has now added the ability for some sensors to trigger an Amazon echo routine (not a smartthings routine), which does let you trigger other smart home devices which are not connected to SmartThings without having to speak an echo command! Or you can set it up so that your echo devices will speak a customized phrase, play a doorbell chime, or various other sound effects. And even better, that contact sensor can be a virtual contact sensor. So you can set up the logic on the SmartThings side however you want, then use webcore to set the virtual contact sensor open or closed as you need it, and that will tr…

[MarkTr]

Another option, using WebCORE instead of Echo Speaks, is to create a virtual contact for the door (or for each door, if you have individual announcements). Change your Alexa routine to trigger on that contact instead of the actual contact. Set up a piston that turns the virtual contact on and off when the real contact opens and closes, but only if SHM is in the appropriate mode. (You can probably do this using an automation in the new app rather than WebCORE but I haven’t tried that yet myself - I might look into it now.) I do the same thing with my “Sneak Mode” switch to prevent announcements if we’re bringing sleeping kids in from the car; the extra round trip through the cloud does sometimes delay the announcements noticeably, but that’s not normally critical for me.

[JDRoberts]

You can do it with the official features in either app, including smartlighting, as long as your virtual device has both capability.switch and capability.sensor. That causes it to show up as both a switch and a sensor. When you turn the switch on, the sensor is marked as open. When you turn the switch off, the sensor is marked as closed. So you can turn the switch on and off with pretty much any automation. And it registers to an echo routine as the sensor opening and closing.

Details are in the FAQ, including a link to the code you can use for the virtual device that has both capabilities.

FAQ: Can I trigger an Echo Action without Speaking to It?