I bought an Amazon Echo purely for barking detection. Dog barking for 30 seconds triggers an Alexa routine, that then turns a switch in hubitat that records the count of barking session's per day, triggers my outside camera to record, Alexa then plays a sound of me saying stop barking which is the main action I wanted.
So it works ok.. however I have noticed it has the odd false positive.
I am looking at what sensor I could use to reduce the false positives. I figured two sources would reduce false positives a lot. I'm ok with missing the odd event. I think Alexa can check the status of a hubitat switch. I know it can change a switch state, as I do that already.
A vibration switch won't work as that'll be active when he walks around.
Maybe I use a camera that has bark detection so that then changes the state of a switch in hubitat when it detects barking, that Alexa checks before running it's own barking routine... So two things need to detect the barking. Although I think they are all subscription for that.
I have Blue Iris which has AI based motion detection if I could be bothered. Not sure if it has it for audio...
I could hack a bark detection unit that then uses an esp32 device to monitor for a voltage change that then changes the status of a switch in hubitat.. again Alexa checks for the switch state when it detects it's own barking... sounding like to much work.
Any thoughts of something that I can integrate into hubitat, or directly into Alexa but I understand isn't an Alexa forum...
Another thought was Alexa triggers on his barking straight away that changes a hubitat switch. Then when hubitat counts so many switch changes in a minute to then change the state of another switch which then triggers Alexa to play my sound..
Ok I see now that Alexa routines are really poor.. it's my first Amazon device and makes me appreciate why I use hubitat.. Hadn't expected it to be so limited.
I will definitely use hubitat for most of this.. other than the audio bark detection and the announcement of my voice.
Seems I can get status of hubitat into Alexa by creating a virtual motion sensor. And detect events in Alexa back to hubitat using virtual switches in hubitat.
So I am now thinking 2x cheap(ish) echo dots to detect dog barking at two locations in my yard. When Echo 1 detects barking, change the status of hubitat switch 1 to ON. Have hubitat switch 1 automatically turn off after 10 seconds. Then do the same for Echo 2 with its own virtual switch in hubitat.
If both switches in hubitat are on at the same time, then rule machine will change the state of a virtual motion sensor which Alexa can trigger it's own routine off.. which will then play the sound of me saying to stop barking.. Everything else like the camera recording and patrolling (pan and tilt around yard) can be handled in hubitat through Blue iris, plus the count of how many times he was barking and the notifications to my phone...
If I could add a sensor in there that would add further reliability to the false triggers then even better.. So still looking for suggestions.
I'm not sure I could help with your use case, but here's another consideration. I set up a routine that notifies me when Alexa hears a dog bark. My dog is probably the quietest dog I've ever had. He rarely barks at all. Except in his sleep, which he does quite a lot and sometimes rather loudly. And Alexa picks that up and notifies me that there was a dog bark. And sometimes Alexa hears a dog bark outside and notifies me of that. So sometimes the false positives aren't really false... just not what I was actually looking for.
I use the dog bark detector just to tell my dog to "calm down" (he doesn't). I get the random false detection for no apparent reason. They are infrequent so I can live with them. Echo also detects dogs barking on TV. It's mostly a novelty, though.
Having my outside camera start recording when the barking trigger occurs was mainly to find out if it's him, another dog or false alarm. I've now set it so it has a prebuffer, as the camera was picking up no barks at all before when it started recording due to the barking trigger. I'm hoping the pre buffer for recording means I capture the noise that triggers it. Time will tell. Early days
Surpringly I couldn't get mine to start consistently using YouTube videos of dogs barking on my phone. It only triggered once it went outside and assume it's barking that triggered it.. but I'm not yet sure.
