Using Echo dot v3 with Smartthings

Devices & Integrations
1

Just got my Echo dot V3 and after link alexa with smartthings, I can see the smartthings devices such as contact closures, smart plugs, and thermostat in Alexa app. Here is where the fun begin….I am just starting but I want to share what I know

You can create routine in alexa to announce door and window once it is opened by asking alexa to say it in the routine. The alexa response time on ST event is quite impressive!

The pain here are:

  1. You have to do one routine for each contact sensor…

>>>This is not as bad since you can customize the text you want alexa to say. (For now, I ask alexa to say “close that door” when I open the front door—for fun)

  1. Alexa speaks too fast and sometime you can make out what was said (try dining room window opens)

>>>As with any text to speech program, there are rules must be obeyed. Alexa also follows sentence structure rules. Those rules are : “space”, “comma”, “period”. Each one of these have some delay value associated with it. Such value is depending on what you want the “text to speech” process sounds like.

>>>Ok, multiple “spaces” will be reduced to one. This is expected since Alexa is to read the news from some where…

>>>”comma” and “period” have longer delay so you can use it to control Alexa speed (try dinning, room. window, opens)

Have fun.

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2

Check out EchoSpeaks:

https://community.smartthings.com/t/release-echo-speaks/142252?u=rontalley

3

Yes, it’s a really cool integration, many community members are using it.

With SmartThings you can even go one step further and create a virtual contact sensor and use that to trigger your echo routines. So that means you can use echo as a text to speech device for anything at all that you can do in SmartThings. Really fun. :sunglasses:

See the community FAQ (the topic title is a clickable link)

Use of the comma is an excellent tip, you should add a post about that to the FAQ.

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4

You can create a virtual contact sensor in SmartThings, and make a rule that opens/closes it any time any of your actual contact sensors open/close. Then you can use the virtual contact sensor to trigger your routine, so that you only need one routine for all of them. Or two, one for all the windows and one for all the doors.

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