How to enable "Play Message on Speaker" as an Action for a Routine

Devices & Integrations
11

For Alexa, as of this writing there are four options for triggering an Alexa routine , depending on the exact details of the use case:

  1. if your trigger is a physical contact sensor, motion sensor, or lock, you can just use that as the trigger in the Alexa routine, you don’t need a virtual device. For example, if you want a spoken message when a specific door opens, you can just put a sensor on that door and use an Alexa routine to have an echo device play the notification.

  2. if your trigger is any other smartthings event, then you will need a proxy device as the trigger for an Alexa routine. If you have a smartthings/aeotec hub, then you can use the virtual device creator edge driver that you mentioned.

  3. if your trigger is any other smartthings event but you don’t have a smartthings/aeotec hub (the vast majority of smartthings users do not have a hub), then you can use a virtual lock created through API browser plus.

SmartThings API Browser+ ... Now Available to All

  1. if you don’t want to use a virtual device or custom code for whatever reason, you can use a hue smart plug connected to a hue bridge as a proxy, because this can be seen and actuated by smartthings and can also be used as a trigger in an Alexa routine. No custom code required. No SmartThings/Aeotec hub required.

Again, all four of these options were discussed in detail in the links that I already posted, so I’m not really sure why we’re going through them again, but I did want to make sure that anyone who happens on this thread in the future but has a different setup or different preferences than the OP could still figure out how to get a notification. :sunglasses:

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