Push notifications to PC/ Amazon Echo

[lalo (larance)]

I’ve found a solution to allow any speaker, including Alexa, to play push notifications when sensors are triggered.
I’m familiar with VLC Things and the Android/Bluetooth methods seen below, but I don’t currently live at the same location as ST and I also don’t own an Android.

VLC Thing. A Poor Man's Sonos. Version 2.0 Released 12/22/2016

Do you want to receive Sonos-like sound and voice notifications from SmartThings but do not feel like spending several hundred dollars on Sonos? Do you have an old laptop/netbook (or any PC for that matter) gathering dust in a closet? If so, you can put it to a good use as shown in this demo: [VLC Thing Demo: VLC Media Player Controlled by SmartThings] “VLC Thing” is a custom SmartThings device driver that controls VLC media player and emulates Sonos audio player, making it possible to use Sonos smart apps to play sounds and voice (text-to-speech) notifications. VLC is a free and open source cross-platform (Linux/MacOS/Windows) multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. [Update 10/04/20…

Looking for a method for Echo Alexa to recognize sensors

I understand Echo doesn’t recognized motion or door/window sensors. However, I have seen a video where a person had Echo tell them when a door was opened and closed or motion was sensed outside. Does anyone have a work around to allow Echo to see sensors?

This method does require a dedicated PC at the moment. I am open to suggestions since this is a very “caveman” type of solution.

The way this works is by having SmartThings send a link via PushBullet, then having it opened in Chrome and played through speakers or connected to Alexa via Bluetooth and lastly having the page closed a minute later.

Things you’ll need;
IFTTT app and account
Pushbullet account
PodOmatic account
dedicated PC
OP Auto Clicker
Pushbullet chrome extension with notifications enabled
Tab Wrangler Chrome extension

First, create a mp3 file that has the audio you’d like played for the notification (such as "Front door opened). There’s plenty in the community of Amazon Alexa’s voice.
Upload the mp3 to PodOmatic and copy the URL and send to your smartphone (Pushbullet works great since you’ll need it regardless)
Create an IFTTT recipe that will push a link via Pushbullet whenever the action is triggered in ST (This-ST door opened, Then-Pushbullet to push Podomatic link)
Now you’ll need OP Auto Clicker to click on the desktop notification, I set my time interval to 1 second.
This will allow you to have the link opened for every notification, but we will need to close these tabs in order to prevent 100’s of tabs from opening. To do this I used Tab Wrangler to close the tabs after 1 minute of inactivity.
Make sure your chrome window only occupies the left side of your monitor, this will make sure you are not continuously clicking on it with OP Auto Clicker (since it needs to be inactive for 1 minute before Tab Wrangler will close it)

Now all you need to do is connect your speaker or Bluetooth device (Amazon Echo), place your cursor on the bottom right of your screen (where the Chrome IFTTT notifications appear) and start OP Auto Clicker (F6 shortcut)