How to make Alexa open/close door locks?

Hey guys, in our busy days, sometimes when I have people coming over and I am nowhere near the door, I just want to say Alexa open the door lock. However, when I create a routine for that in Smartthings and then sync it with Alexa, it tells me that for the security reason, the routines was not performed. How do I overwrite it?

Any ideas?

Thanks.

If you are open to installing a new skill, you can do that with Ask Alexa. It will allow you to do SO much more, but goes above and beyond the standard integration allowing doors and locks to be open/closed/locked/unlocked with just a voice command.

The other, more simple option is to create a couple Alexa routines (with the Amazon native mobile app) and then tie them to a virtual switch and use something like IFTTT or WebCoRE to tie them to a function (like opening or locking a door).

Does that make sense?

Here you go, this is the easiest way:

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I just created virtual switch (I think it should be the easiest way to control alexa), however, that switch is not showing up in my Smartthings app, nor in my list of devices in my IDE. Was searching internet why and could not find anything that would be related. Seems all of the posts are outdated with the old type of IDE, that I can’t really follow anymore.

I’m not sure what you mean by “outdated IDE.” There have just been a couple of changes there.

Anyway, I can’t show you what it will look like in the app because that doesn’t work for me now, someone else will have to do it. But here are the IDE steps that should work.

  1. Start on the first page of this forum and click on developer tools.

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  1. log in

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  1. choose My Devices

  2. choose New device

Make sure all of your existing devices show on this list. If not, you are logged into the wrong shard. Someone else will have to help you with that. But as long as your other devices show up here you are fine.

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  1. fill in the fields and choose “momentary button tile” as the device type.

  1. create the new device.

There will be a green message at the top of the screen when you successfully create the device.

  1. click on my devices again to make sure that the new switch is there.

At this point it should show up in the things list as a momentary Switch. So now when you set up the routine to automatically run you want to say that it will activate “when something is turned on,” and then select your new device.

  1. The last step is that you will have to authorize echo to use your new switch. You will do that through the mobile app, so again someone else will have to help you with that step.

But that should do it. :sunglasses:

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Always login to SmartThings through https://account.smartthings.com and you will be redirected to your correct shard.

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I did all of the steps that you have listed. However, step number 7 where I should go and click on my devices to see new switch, it is not there. Yes, when I created it, I did get green note that my switch created.

Got it. For some reason it took a while to populate in the devices. Thank you!

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Alexa will lock the door straight away. It is unlocking that is the issue… I made an IFTTT trigger for this that works almost instantly.