I'm struggling to find a way to have a 'package outside on porch' routine. Amazon provides a circling colored ring, and also a bing sound (which I can't hear being deaf).
I can't think of a way to trigger a light to flash or go in when an amazon delivery has occurred. Currently I have to monitor a camera on a screen as I wait impatiently for my days' delivery to happen. Has anyone solved this in some way?
Hm you would think Alexa would have a routine trigger for notifications but they do not, I just went to check. Do you happen to use gmail with your amazon account? I am thinking you could do something there that triggers a virtual switch in Hubitat. Either custom stuff, or even just through IFTTT might be good enough and easy to do.
Here is a custom script that someone made, looks like a bit of work to get going though.
How about a motion sensor positioned to only cover the porch area?
You wouldn't be able to absolutely tell if it was Amazon, UPS, or a visitor etc, however for us it would not matter. We would wish to be informed regardless and the few times its not a delivery would not be an inconvenience.
I have a Ring Doorbell Pro (connected to HE) installed on my front door/porch and whenever anything/anybody trips the Ring motion/camera sensor, HE rings a Z-Wave connected Dome sound device with a unique chime so we know that someone/something is there.
The Dome sound device only rings between sunrise and sunset as to not bother us on the occasional nocturnal squirrels/ferrel cats... 
Another (but more involved) option is using AI recognition if available on your camera. I use the Camect hub integrated with HE thru the Camect Connect community app. Camect recognizes the logo on the Amazon (or USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL) vehicle. It can also ID a person vs various animals etc. I have a Rule in HE that announces (in your case perhaps a particular lighting scheme) that “a (insert delivery service) package has been delivered to the (insert front or back depending upon which camera picks it up) porch”. The announcement (via Alexa) is made along with a pushover notification when a delivery vehicle is picked up by my front yard camera and a person at the front or back door is picked up within a certain period of time. Sometimes it will even identify the person as a Amazon delivery person, but this is rare as it is not so good identifying a logo on the delivery person’s uniform. It is really reliable identifying the various trucks however.
I am not sure, but a similar ability may be doable with Blue Iris also (I have never used BI and am only familiar with Camect). Because of its excellent AI, I am a big fan of Camect as its object recognition really helps in preventing false alarms in my security system due to motion from the local wildlife outdoors, and false triggering of motion detection from any pets in the house.
I know, perhaps a bit more equipment intensive than just using motion sensors, but just another option. Hope this helps.
wyze camers are pretty cheap and will do package detection along with a built in rule machine to tigger notification ... which also talks to alexa in most parts of the world if this helps
a quick read of all these great suggestions - none really float my boat! I looked at Amazons routines and was expecting I could tie in there but it became clear others had been before me looking for the same answers - THe idea's of using cameras in differing ways had crossed my mind but it seemed to inaccurate. Sure, anybody on the porch can trigger - I'm a BlueIris user but since moving to a new place recently there was already an NVR in place and the BI isn't necessary here.
IFTTT had not come to mind, it might have some method but I don't get a notification via sms or email so not sure how to trigger. I'll put thought into it today.
When Amazon delivers a package, the driver notifies Amazon. Amazon sends an email notifying you of the delivery. If you have Amazon Echo devices, they also send a notification.
If you have an inexpensive Echo Dot, the ring around the top of the device will turn green, alerting you to the notification. I understand that you may not hear the notification beep or the actual notification, but you can see the lighted ring and check your email.
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Another option would be key delivery. This requires a MyQ garage door opener. The movement of the door can trigger as rule to control a light. Seems like an overkill but would work.
We need an AfterShip integration.
Might be possible to set up a rule in email to send a message when a delivery email arrives. Have that message sent to text phone number (e.g., for Verizon, xxx-xxx-xxxx@vtext.com) and voila, text notification of deliveries.
Second option: If there is space to put a container of some sort on your porch for deliveries, then you could use a contact sensor on the lid to alert you when the container is opened to put the delivery into it.
the email option seems to be the current best idea on how to signal into HE that the event has triggered. I have also reached out to Tonesto about Echo Speaks to see if it's possible to pull the notification directly from Amazon somehow, if he isn't already!
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Can you elaborate on why this isn’t sufficient? I think you’re referring to a visual cue from an echo device right?
What’s the goal by adding a light flash? In another part of the house?
Except that the person and package detection AI as of late has been flakier than my late grandmothers pie crust.
Received a package today and all I got was the bong sound from Alexa after the driver marked the package as delivered.
Wyze AI only detected motion, not the guy with the bright orange vest on with the package in his hand.
@jshimota I am pretty sure that my Google Calendar/Task/Reminder app can be expanded to Gmail too. I just looked in the Google Console and see there is a mail API with similar search capabilities as calendar events. You would have to poll much more frequently but it might work. Though it might be better to setup a filter and forwarding rule within Gmail itself to say IFTTT.
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FWIW, the Camect utilization in my use case has been rock solid. It may just be where I have my driveway camera set up, but every single delivery truck that even passes on the street is correctly identified as either a Amazon truck, a USPS truck, UPS, FedEx or DHL truck. This last Christmas season, I had to work on some stuff in my front yard all day and it correctly identified every single delivery vehicle that passed, and there were quite a few considering the season! It is absolutely uncanny how well it is able to identify these through its AI (and Camect is 100% local and does not rely on the cloud). Anyway, I can understand why you would not necessarily want to go this way as the setup (both physical and logic wise) is a little more involved than a purely software based solution. Good luck! Hope you find something that works for you.
I agree, BI does logo recognition as well, but just because it recognizes a delivery truck passing by doesn't always mean that the truck stopped and delivered a package.
@Vettester , I also agree if that is all you are depending upon (meaning just detection of a truck logo) but that’s where RM Rules come into play. If an object identified as a person approaches my porch within a set period of time after detection of a delivery vehicle (direction approach/depart determined by motion sensors) and/or an object package is identified, then you can pretty well be assured that it is a delivery, and logo identification can tell you what type of delivery (especially helpful if you are expecting a delivery). At any rate, this has been extremely accurate for my setup. For my mailbox, a specific area in front of the mailbox is defined for detection of a USPS logo, and mail delivery is only triggered if a USPS truck is in front of the mailbox and the mailbox door is opened while the USPS truck is present. Anyway, was just trying to give some possible suggestions as a way to contribute as I have gotten so much valuable help from this great community in learning how to use HE in various applications. YMMV.
This is a good suggestion that I'll have to look into. Are you using BI to do this?
Hi @Vettester , I’m using Camect. I have only very limited experience with BI. At the time I started to seriously looking into object identification, I decided to use Camect as BI was not as sophisticated with object identification at that time. However, I understand that BI has since gotten much more sophisticated in this respect and may be equivalent to or even better than Camect at this time as far as I know (which I don’t, lol). Also, Camect, being hardware based (the Camect hub is the same size as the HE hub) is unfortunately limited to 24MB stream total so I use it only for object recognition and alerts, limiting most of my video streams to it to 1080p, with 4K only on a couple of “critical” cameras. My cameras simultaneous stream to a separate NVR at full res (4K) 24/7 if I need to review at higher definition for law enforcemnt etc. Usually, 1080p is more than adequate for quick viewing on Camect and most purposes, but that is definitely a big advantage of BI as BI scales much better as you can run it on your own hardware. What makes all this so much more useful, of course, is Hubitat! Hope this helps.
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