Setting up an automation to have Alexa announce the status of a contact sensor?

[h0ckeysk8er (Bruce Pinsky)]

@THUMBxxNINJA

I am new here, so please forgive me for my trespasses.

• What I want to accomplish:
  At 9pm each night if the garage door is open Alexa will announce, “Garage door left open”.
• Here is what I have:
  A ring contact sensor on my garage door that is integrated into my SmartThings hub and also in my Alexa app.
• What I have tried:

1. Creating a routine in the Alexa app (I think this doesn’t work because the state of the contact switch is already open and the routine would need to see the state change from closed to open to work).
2. Creating a routine in SmartThings. (I am missing the “play message on speaker” setting)
3. Using a virtual switch in SmartThings to trigger a routine in Alexa. (I tried multiple different virtual devices but any of the devices I could write to in SmartThings were unreadable devices in the Alexa app and vice versa) I have not tried any edge driver virtual switches because I keep reading that they are not reliable or working at all after a previous update?

I hope there is something simple that I am missing or doing wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

You need either a virtual sensor or a virtual lock to trigger Alexa routines. While you can create a virtual sensor in ST without a hub, there is no way to change the state of that sensor. So, without a hub, use a virtual lock. If you have a hub, you can use the vEdge Creator Edge driver to create a virtual switch that can be configured to include a contact sensor that Alexa will recognize. If you use the Edge driver, I would suggest creating a virtual momentary switch since you only need it to trigger the announcement.

Once you have the virtual sensor, set up the following ST Routine:

If Garage Door sensor is open (precondition)
Time is 9 pm
Then Push virtual momentary switch (or open virtual lock)

the above Routine should trigger an Alexa routine:

If virtual momentary switch (or virtual lock) opens
Then Alexa Says "Garage door left open"

If you use the virtual lock, you will should a “Close virtual lock” to the first Routine. With a virtual momentary switch, you can configure it to auto-revert.