NEW: Alexa IFTTT Triggers
As of November 12, 2015, there are now two official ways to integrate Alexa and SmartThings.
The first way is fast and simple, and can do any one thing that you can do in the official SmartThings IFTTT channel.
You pick any phrase you want to use, and use that as the “if” in the Alexa channel at IFTTT for a new recipe. Then you just pick from the dropdown options in the SmartThings IFTTT channel as the “that.”
To use a recipe, you say “Alexa, trigger {my phrase}.”
So you could say “Alexa, trigger open the pod bay doors” to open your garage door, “Alexa, trigger autodestruct” to turn on your siren, “Alexa, trigger kitchen lights” to turn on your kitchen light. Whatever you want. This is the power of IFTTT, and why SmartThings having a channel there is so useful.
If you haven’t used IFTTT before, the following is a good tutorial:
And this is the SmartThings IFTTT information.
http://blog.smartthings.com/how-to/ultimate-ifttt-guide/
The Second Official Integration: Connected Home Devices
The second method is an integration specific to SmartThings and echo. With this method, you will be able to group multiple devices together, such as a group of lights. You also won’t have to include the word trigger. Set up is a little more complicated, but straightforward. This method does not use IFTTT.
(We previously had a FAQ on some first step integrations which involve various workarounds. I’m leaving that up because it does have all the links for the people who want to write their own servers and stuff. But as of August 21, 2015, SMARTTHINGS is now one of the official “connected home devices” that The Amazon echo will work with, and it’s a great integration. So this FAQ is specifically for the official integration. I will put a link at the very end of this to the do it yourself coding FAQ. )
Steps for the official connected home method are very easy:
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open the Amazon echo app
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Click on “settings”
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click on “connected home”
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look for the section that says “device links.” SmartThings will appear in this list and you will be able to choose it. Click here, and sign into your smartthings account.
- you will see a list of the smartthings devices that you can add to your echo account. Just pick the ones you want to add. These can include virtual switches, which will be very useful for things like mode changes.
If you have a device like a WeMo switch or a Phillips hue bulb which was already added to your echo account through a different service, you don’t need to authorize it again from your smartthings list. Echo lets you combine devices from different services into the same group, so you’ll have all the same functionality. My personal recommendation would be to only authorize devices on the SmartThings list which are not already authorized from another service.
Once you have selected all the devices you want to add to your echo account, you will return to the connected home screen.
- scroll all the way down near the bottom of the connected home screen until you see “discover devices.” Tap that, and Amazon will make the connection with SmartThings.
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now the smartthings devices that you selected in step five should show up in the device list on the connected home page.
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you can now add new groups, or add the smart things devices to your existing groups. You could have a group that includes some smartthings devices and some non-smart things devices. You can also include the same device in many different groups.
Tip: Names and Numbers if your smartthings device name includes a number, “kitchen 1”, then echo will have a lot of problems with it and it will miss a lot of commands. You could fix this by changing the device name in smartthings. But if you don’t want to do that, you can also create a group in echo that has only one device in it and just give the group an echofriendly name like “kitchen ceiling.”
Tip: “You say ‘chickpea,’ I say ‘garbanzo’” if two people in your household call the same room by different names, like “study” and “office” just make different groups with the different names, but the same devices,and then both commands will work. This is a really voice-friendly design.
Tip: you can also set up a group based on the use case, rather than a room. For example, I have a group called “bedtime” which turns on a pathway of lights through several rooms from the living room to The bedroom and also triggers my good night mode using a virtual switch. So I can just say “Alexa, bedtime on.”
- once you have the link to smartthings established, the devices authorized on the smartthings side, the devices discovered by echo, and the Discovered devices put into groups, you are ready to use echo commands. Echo uses natural language, and it’s really great. You can say “turn on kitchen ceiling,” “turn on the kitchen ceiling,”, “turn the kitchen ceiling on,” “Switch on kitchen ceiling,” “kitchen ceiling on” and a bunch of other variations and it will likely figure it out. Works really well.
Your basic commands are “on,” "off, " “dim to…” See echo’s help for more information.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201751280
- To add more devices in the future. if in the future you want to add more smartthings-controlled devices to your echo account, it’s really easy, but it’s the one thing that is not intuitive. You can do it from either the Amazon echo app or from the smartthings mobile app.
10a) to do it from the smartthings mobile app, open the context menu icon ( three vertical dots or three horizontal lines depending on the version) at the top right of the screen. Choose “SmartApps.”
SmartThings automatically installed an Amazon echo smartapp for you when you linked it to echo.
Click on the on the “Amazon echo” tile, and you will see the list of devices you currently have authorized for Echo to use.
Click on the green plus sign in the lower right, and you will be able to add or remove devices from the authorized list.
Click Done at the top right of the screen when you are done. This will return you to the list of authorized devices.
Click next at the top right of the list screen.
Now have Echo “discover new devices.” When it is done, click Done at the top right of the Discover page.
10b) Alternatively, you can do this in the Amazon echo app. If you’re already in the Echo app, Go to settings, connected home, and then unlink smartthings. Now link it again and it will take you back to the sign in page for your account and then let you authorize the devices you want echo to be able to control. Make sure all the devices you want to control through echo are checked, not just the new ones.
Now you are back to step seven in the list above. You will need to discover the devices and then group them.
Adding new devices through the SmartThings mobile app is a little bit faster, but it doesn’t let you change the echo groups. So which method you will use just depends on exactly what you’re trying to do.
11) Echo Control of Routines
As others have said, this is a really great integration. And you can combine it with some of the other really great smartthings integrations, like IFTTT, by using virtual switches. So using echo with a SmartThings controlled virtual switch now gives you a natural language voice trigger you can use for anything with an IFTTT channel. Totally awesome.
You can also use a virtual switch to trigger a Routine or a Mode change.
The following FAQ explains how to do that:
12) What about Locks?
There are three choices for echo control of locks.
The easiest way is just to use the Alexa IFTTT trigger method detailed at the top of this post. Choose a trigger phrase for the Alexa channel, choose lock in the SmartThings channel, and you’re done. Your voice phrase will be “Alexa, trigger {my phrase}” so you can make it as simple as "Alexa, trigger unlock the front door. "
Alternatively, if you want to use the official SmartThings/echo integration that doesn’t use IFTTT, there are two methods for that. Since echo only currently recognizes thermostats, switches and lights, Locks won’t show up when you discover the device. So you have to link them to a switch that echo can recognize.
The first way to do this is just to use a routine and the instructions from step 11 above .
Alternatively, you can associate a switch directly with the lock as @luna has done in the following thread:
13) What about Thermostats?
Echo has an official integration with Ecobee and Nest.
As of March 2016, Echo added thermostats as a device class, so you will now be able to control them through the regular SmartThings integration. Not all thermostats appear to support Auto mode, however.
14) Additional Resources for Programmers with Alexa Development Accounts
If you have an Alexa developer account, or if you are a programmer who is interested in getting into this side of things, some community members have worked on unofficial projects to enable you to do much more with echo, such as querying current device status. However these do require both technical interest and skill. Here’s one example.
This has led to the development of two separate community – created projects, AskAlexa and EchoSisstant. Both will require you to set up an Amazon developers account, but you will be able to do much more with Alexa than the native integration provides.
For more information, see:
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Ask_Alexa
And
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=EchoSistant
15) Previous methods
And, as promised, here’s the link to the old FAQ that covered all the ways people were doing echo integration before this official integration was available. But honestly, the official integration is much better unless you want to run your own servers and stuff like that.