Alexa speak contact open

Was very interested in the demo of Alexa speaking door is open in tonights Youtube show. I have the Alexa Skill installed and use it to turn lights on and off via voice commands to Alexa. Is this the same Alexa Skill that will now allow me to have her speak when a door opens? If so, how do I do that?

Keep an eye on the announcements category for posts from Hubitat staff re: hub firmware updates. This addition to the Alexa skill is a part of the most recent update. I have discourse set to notify me by email when new threads are started in the announcements category.

Contact and motion sensors paired to hubitat are now available in Alexa routines. Those are created in the Alexa app.

Is out now?

Took awhile for it to soak in that I needed to set an Alexa routine in the Alexa app. Works great, thanks for the reply.

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I thought this might have come up but I can't find the thread now so am asking (possibly again). Could a presence sensor be exposed to Alexa as a contact switch (Present=Close, Away=Open) to drive Alexa Routines? That could eliminate the need for a rule and a virtual contact switch.

Yes, but you'll have to do some work. A virtual contact sensor plus a Rule Machine rule with a custom action that "syncs" the presence sensor states to the desired contact sensor state (that's where you need the custom action, to change its open/close state) should work. Or you could cheat and use a virtual driver that does something like this for you, though I'm not sure one exists in the community (there is a "virtual presence with switch" driver I know of that could be extended if you know how).

I see that's pretty much what you already know. :slight_smile: The limitation, I think, is that Alexa doesn't directly support presence-type sensors. The driver idea could get you closer to one device, but you'd probably still want to "sync" it from a real one somehow.

Sorry @bertabcd1234, I wasn't clear. Yes, I can set up the virtual contact and rule. I meant could Hubitat be extended so that Alexa sees the proximity sensor as a contact switch so I could process a routine based on it. This is really a Feature Request.

If it's any consolation, a driver that does both contact an presence, also suggested, might eliminate at least one rule. :joy: (Or at least replace one automation with another depending on how you're actually doing presence. It could eliminate it entirely if you're driving presence based on something else, like I used to with HomeKit and could have just directly used such a device.)

I wanted to follow up and see how this integration has performed....

I have been sitting for the last year with an HE in the shopping cart as I toy with ST (more like fight with ST). My home deployment is small and very basic. My biggest problem I am having right now is I have multi purpose sensors on the doors throughout my house. When someone opens the door, I would like Alexa to make an announcement to my Echo Dots. Seems easy enough but it seems like with ST I have to jump through hoops, install device handlers, use virtual switches, and even then, it can be 5-10 minutes after the door is opened before the announcement comes through. Sometimes not at all. Which in my opinion is unacceptable.

So my question is, how is HE working with Alexa and do you think HE can handle my use case in an acceptable manner? If so, I will order because I cannot take this any more (and the wife is furious)

Please save me!

It is working great for me. I have contact sensors setup on two gates outside:

image

The action is:

image

The message ends up as "Front gate is now open." Now that I'm looking at it I see that it has extraneous "unit" and "type" variables but it hasn't impacted it.

As I was typing this I had a delivery. Watching on the cameras I am getting the announcement 1-2 seconds after the event. It has been working well. It did stop working a week ago but just needed to be reconnected to Alexa. That was the first time that had happened in maybe eight months of use.

Or you could use Node Red and bypass Echo Speaks and the Hubitat skill altogether. There is no delay whatsoever.

here is mine using the alternative alexa tts