Is there any way to use my Echo devices as audio devices to read alerts aloud from the ST app e.g. creating an automation/routine for when when the SHM is set to Away I want all the Echos to announce “Alarm is activated”.
Cheers
Simon
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This “was” simple enough with the built in Alexa Routines using a virtual or physical contact or motion but SmartThings has screwed the pooch on it working correctly. They are working on fixing it.
There is also EchoSpeaks which is a custom App using Groovy but once again, SmartThings has decided to no longer support it after September 8.
Both options still work today with Alexa Routines working intermittently.
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@AnimalHungry
As @rontalley said, they made it a whole lot harder to do this.
See this thread: New SmartThings Alexa skill (2020)
They still haven’t paused the transition. They could pause the transition, give back the old echo skill, and leave echo speaks until the problem is solved. What’s going to happen is that the smartthings classic skill will be removed, and all the people with working announcements will now have non working automations. echo speaks will have gone, and the automations will not work whatsoever.
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Thanks for the replies.
Oh man, that’s ridiculous. It seems so easy (to the non-programmer) to make the Echo devices appear as an audio output device in ST then get them to read text aloud. Oh well, I guess I wait.
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@AnimalHungry Sonos has done exactly that. It is a bluetooth speaker with Alexa and a smartthings integration
Nice. Although Sonos is $200 while I can buy an Echo dot for $30.
@AnimalHungry Maybe try IKEA symponisk I guess
@AnimalHungry I have my problems with Sonos. It’s too expensive, too large, and it doesn’t support many things that echo dots do because it’s third party. But it’s smart home is amazing
Before EchoSpeaks, I used LanNouncer with cheap Fire Tablets. The voice synth is actually good for regular announcements but you could also have it talk to a Dot to execute Alexa Routines. Stick those two devices in a closet and use webCoRE as you may!
Old Video:
This may not be ideal but you could setup a virtual switch in SmartThings, have WebCore turn it on in whatever circumstances and use a routine in Alexa to say a given phrase. This routine works well to announce when my front door is open.
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@tommygun1981 this is where the problem comes. I never used echo speaks and always did this. Recently, with the new alexa skill, this is working intermittently and sometimes announcing multiple times without the door actually being opened. However, smartthings refuses to slow down the transition to the API to get this sorted out
Thanks for the replies. I’ve never used webCoRE but I installed it and created a virtual switch in the IDE but I just get error messages when I try and load the webCoRE dashboard. It looks like a great app though, if I can get it working.
@AnimalHungry by the way, if you can wait out smartthings issue and let it be fixed, just create a virtual contact sensor and use webcore to sync it to a switch. Or use the device handler with both a contact and a switch that automatically syncs through the DTH.
That’s what I did. I have a Samsung smart washer and dryer and I created virtual sensors and use webCORE to make it so the virtual sensors flip open when the wash cycle / dry cycle is complete then back closed a few seconds later. I didn’t used Alexa routines to announce wash cycle/dry cycle complete whenever the virtual switches change to open.
Thank you all for introducing me to webCoRE, it’s a great tool. I’m almost there with my Alexa talking routines. I posted a new webCoRE question here which also sets out how I made Alexa talk: Simple delay command to then trigger a virtual switch