Simple Questions - Is Smart Things capable of triggering group tasks through small questions?

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Hi,
I have a simple question about Smart Things and was wondering, if this is a right option for me.

Can Smart Things allow me to do the following ?

  • Creating group tasks with single sentences? As an example, if I say, “Alexa, Trigger movie night”, can this dim the lights of cinema room to 10%, lock the house and put the thermostat zones to lowest except the one in the cinema room ?

I’ll be grateful if you could assist.

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With Ask Alexa you can do this.

“Alexa, tell smartthings its movie time.” Which you can tie to a routine or virtual switch with core.

If you have a Harmony Hub you can have a rule in Core that if the TV is on, and the Fire TV is on to dim the lights and do everything you want.

I rarely tinker with my system now. I have it mostly locked in. Its not perfect, but it pretty close.

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Thank you for your reply. So you’re saying I’d need Harmony Hub + SmartThings to pull this off?

When I said Lock the house + Control different zones of Thermostats + turn the camera on in the kids room so that I can monitor them etc, I am trying to connect/trigger multiple things to reach one specfic goal.

If I take this examples, can this achievable through SmartThings, if yes with which products?

Thanks

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Yes. Generally you just need the hardware to accomplish the talking and a smartapp in SmartThings can be a one push solution. Core is the community rules app that a lot of us use for large scale automations like you are seeking.

Generally, you will want to peruse the Device Integrations section of the forum to find the hardware you need for your task(s), then read up on Core once you are ready to write automations.

The cleanest home entertainment automation will be Logitech’s Harmony Hub which is a wifi IR repeater you control through your phone and cloud-to-cloud throughout ST.

You then get ST talking to your locks, lights, thermostats, and install Ask Alexa.

You can create a Routine in the ST app that sets any number of lights to 10%, locks all zwave locks, lowers any thermostats to whatever temperature, and fires whatever Logitech Harmony scene you’ve set up that corresponds to turning your tv on to play a movie. You then tell Alexa to fire that routine anytime you’re ready for a movie.

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You don’t need a Harmony Hub, but it makes some nice automation based off what you are doing.

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Thank you very much for this guys! Is there a way I can find some steps somewhere to set this up?

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You could start with this: