Alexa Home/Away linked to Hubitat Presence?

Amazon just announced widespread availability of "Guard" -- the downside is that you need to tell Alexa that you're leaving or when you're home.

Is there any chance that the Hubitat "presence" might be able to be linked to this home/away status anytime soon?

Probably not... However, in the US, there is geofencing available in the Alexa app that could maybe trigger Guard. I'm waiting for the full rollout to be able to test that as I am already testing Alexa geofencing for presence in HE instead of Life360.

1 Like

It really depends on whether they expose it in the API.

It looks like most of the API may be implemented here, so it's possible it can be added?

Right now i'm not seeing anything I can use to trigger Alexa Guard. I promise that as soon as there is a way It will be added.

Just an FYI... Alexa Guard only seems to be supported on newer Echos | Show, Spot, Dot (Gen3)

1 Like

Strange - when I set it up in my app, it let me pick my Echo Dots (Gen 2 and 1 Gen 3) and Echo (Gen 1) as supported devices...

That is strange. I have 13 echos and only 4 show up in Alexa Guard.
Maybe my echo devices just need to update there firmware still

If Guard mode could toggle a virtual switch on or off then you could easily use this to set presence within Hubitat.

in my ideal world, Hubitat would set Guard mode, not the other way around. Here's why:

  1. I have my alarm tied to my Nest account and automatically marks the house as "away" when the alarm is armed away.
  2. my Nest account status appears in Hubitat with the "Nest Presence" device
  3. HSM arms/disarms alongside this Presence device
  4. ideally, Alexa would on/off Guard mode with this same Presence device

What's been your experience with the Alexa geofencing? I set it a couple of weeks ago. It almost never executes the Alexa routines I tied to leaving or arriving. Is there a way to see where Alexa thinks you're currently located?

Haven't touched geofencing on any product except to play with it a little occasionally when I first got my Vera.

Personally, I don't like it except for mild convenience. I have a Ubiquiti wireless network and sometimes watch how long it takes for wifi devices to drop off when my wife leaves the house (for example)... it's way too long, and that's a system that I'd actually trust to report connections correctly.

This is probably just a bug in the app. If I look at my setup, my gen 1 Echo is setup with guard. If I tap that, it also shows my Gen 2 Echo as being setup with guard, but not on the overview screen. If I then tap on the Echo 2 to uncheck it, it gives me a warning message like that's going to completely disable guard.

Right now, I don't know which Echo is working with Guard. Might be just the Echo 2 and the Echo 1 is being erroneously shown as active in the app. Just seems like lots of kinks to work out, despite all the time the took before release.

About the same... Ish. What's weird is that we have a Garmin Speak in both cars and those trigger the geofencing better than our phones. Weirdest damn thing.

Yes, you can see an approximation by going into Routines > Create a routine and then select the location item. From there, you should see a map if you click on one of the locations below that.

You might get what you want via routines at some point, but I wouldn't hold your breath. You'll probably see a competing capability from Google for the Home devices, before you'll see Amazon opening up their capabilities to competitors. They have Ring Alarms to sell and a contract with ADT to fulfill. :wink:

1 Like

I thought that was null and void due to the SmartThings contract with ADT?

I can't imagine why they would offer integration with ADT if that were the case, versus selling Ring Alarm systems.

2 Likes

Anybody in Canada have guard show up in their system? Or geofencing?

I have mine setup for the US so I get the good stuff but I’m setting up some for a friend and just curious if those to features are available in Canada.

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.