FAQ: Amazon Echo: The Official SmartThings Integration is here! (Initial SetUp FAQ)

[JDRoberts]

@eibyer

I decided to look up the echo remote and to my surprise it’s OOS! I’m exploring using Alexa to automate part of my home theater like powering on the equipment etc., is there abother way I can accomplish this via voice command?

There are three different Amazon devices that use echo: the original echo cylinder, the echo remote, And the Amazon fire TV remote. Only the first is completely hands-free. But if you were considering the echo remote (which requires pushing a button while you’re talking) then the fire TV voice remote might also work well.

If you’re asking about a completely different voice method, there are many. Anything which can send a voice text to IFT TT can be used to trigger harmony or smartthings through their IFTTT channels.

The following thread discusses various voice options:

Voice Command Solution - Discussion

Hey everyone, I am sure many of you have heard of Ivee (helloivee.com). I personally don’t own one, but it did make me do some thinking. For them to achieve integration with SmartThings, it would appear they have to communicate with the SmartThings cloud. Is this correct? Have we heard of any way to do this officially as of yet? Here is where I am going with this…: My dream would be to put 5+ Raspberry Pi’s in my house, with a good bi-directional mic, and a wifi dongle. Toss on a simple “always listening app” and basically build a voice recognition app using one of the many cloud-based voice recognition api’s. I look at the products like Ivee, and in some ways I feel that they are too ambitious with trying to integrate into 100 solutions, they are trying to do too much with having a pr…

The Fire TV method is discussed here:

New Amazon Fire TV and Stick with Alexa!

Amazon just announced a that their new Fire TV and Fire TV stick will feature Alexa integration. I can’t find it anywhere in the press release, but I wonder if these new devices will integrate with ST as easily?? At $99 and $49, these are way cheaper than the Echo and provide functionality it doesn’t.