How to trigger a light when Amazon delivers a package

Do you have the Amazon mobile app installed on your phone? Everytime a package is delivered to my home, I get a notification on my phone from Amazon. It is not instaneous, though. I also have USPS Informed Delivery configured, and get emails from USPS each time a package is delivered. I also have free accounts at UPS and Fedex, and have those apps installed on my phone and thus get notifications of those deliveries as well. I also have a vibration sensor on my mailbox and a Ring video doorbell on the front porch. It is pretty hard for a delivery to be made to my home without me knowing about it on my phone. :wink:

1 Like

I sometimes laugh as a see what seems to me at least, a complete tangent to the intial question or problem.
The discussion of vehicle identification, while interesting, misses the mark and adds a level of complexity that just seems so unfathomable. Is it academically interesting? sure, I guess. Will I go to that much work just because I'm too lazy to open my security camera window on my computer? um. No.
It's been mentioned there are already notifications in place - Emails, the ring scrolling around the a Echo Dot. When I first asked the question, I was just expecting someone to point out a small thing I'd overlooked what would recognize the Echo Dot in a 'you've a delivery' state and let me do what I want - flash my lights in this case.
So I'll add more to whats going on here - as the question also was asked 'why do you need to flash your lights'.
So - my echo dot is behind my deskphone and not visible. I am deaf. the Bong you all hear, I can't hear. I can push volume to 11 and then hear it, or put on my hearing system (I have 20% in 1 ear, 0 in the other) but while I'm programming in my office I don't normally hear squat.
When my phones ring, the room lights flash. Us deaf people have a device that makes that easy. I just wanted to add a flash of my office lights so I knew not to let packages sit too long for fear of porch pirates. and No. I'm not giving Amazon my house keys either. I trust Amazon, just not their drivers.
Okay. all that said. On the theoretically, I did attempt deepstack but don't have the puter horsepower to run it. it's a beast.
I'm not buying cameras - i already have them. I just don't want to watch them 24/7.
The Email idea is too hit or miss. I don't ALWAYS get an email. Sometimes the driver doesn't update Amazon of my delivery right away.
The text message might be okay, but it just seems like YAML to me. When there are too many ways to skin a cat, you forget which knife you used.
So. Back to my problem - The amazon dev site talks about a new interface expansion for delivery mechanisms. I also reached out with a PR to Tonesto asking for a feature request on my Echo devices being able to have an event with the ring (for other purposes as well).

I thank you all for your interest and support on this topic! As always, HE community is a blast!

4 Likes

I think this tends to happen when there is no easy, available solution. So people offer alternatives that have worked for them.

5 Likes

This would seem to affect any notification from Amazon of the delivery (rather than only an issue w/email-based notifications) ... if Amazon isn't notified by the driver the delivery occurred, no notification option is going to work.

1 Like

Well said @marktheknife. I think everyone here is just trying to help the OP who is “struggling to find a way”. I know I have received much help from this community and appreciate it.

@danabw maybe my wording was not good enough. I don't always get email because I don't monitor email. I don't wish to allocate screen space to a mail app, and I don't always work locally.
Often I'm vpn'd to a clients or doing work with remote security. Regardless -
I feel I'm being forced to explain and defend. If you have it working, even in a convoluted way - thats great! I was looking for help in case I missed something obvious ie; a driver exists, an app exists or theres a variable/or a soft switch somewhere I can grab onto. I was hoping to hear 'oh, check cobra's site' or 'theres this thingy on Smartthings you can port. No one's mentioned any thing I want, so theres no solve.

In the spirit of things - I'll say why I want what I want. I don't like things that work 'most' of the time. I don't like email for that reason. Text messages. the same. Image ID's from camera's? Fun stuff but not very accurate at all. One person may have allocated 1000's of dollars and 100's of hours and gotten something to work most of the time but that is not realistic in my book.
as a small joke - let me add, right now I rely on the dog getting excited. He's about 90% accurate... better than many other options!
HA.

Sometimes there's just no answer at this time. Don't be slighted.

complete agreement there @marktheknife ! It's the first indicator I'm likely not getting what I want today....

Explain? Sure. Asking questions helps others understand better when they’re not clear on certain details that may seem obvious to you.

IMHO no one’s asking you to defend anything.

1 Like

Thanks for explaining...

This isn't about forcing you to defend anything, our addtional questions and probing are all about ensuring that we understand your use-case and any limitations. Any good solution designer wants to understand their clients needs, capabilties, and limitations as clearly as possible, so they can be as helpful as possible. :slight_smile: At the end, we're all just trying to help, however clumsily it may come across as badgering or cross-examining you. :smiley:

For an email option, I'm not suggesting you monitor your email. To use an email-based solution it would not matter whether or not you actually see your email arriving, are on a VPN, etc. As long as it's sent by Amazon it will arrive in your email account, and if you have a web-based automation based on your email account, then that would still run. It should be a set-it-and-forget-it solution, or it's not really a solution.

I think that @ritchierich's suggestion below could work that way, but only he can report back if it seems feasible and he has time to work on it.

I hope that helps w/any misunderstanding about our motives...we are a bunch of HE cowboys who saw a fellow rancher who needed help with a difficult steer, and are maybe throwing a few too many ropes on the animal at the same time. :wink:

3 Likes

Analogy of the year!

1 Like

And in the 'Why didn't I think of that first" category...

It turns out that the GF has a Ring camera on the doorbell (I completely had no idea of since the feed doesn't go into the NVR). I linked the Ring into the Alexa, which allows an event of Motion and/or Doorbell I've now linked to an Action to throw a virtual switch which in turn ...

Cat. Skinned. Steer. Roped.
image

And having just posted that I see a bug in the timestamp for the notifier... next project!

3 Likes

@jshimota , glad to hear you were able to figure out a solution. It looks like you ended up using your camera system after all. Hope you find it at least as reliable as your dog, lol. Like you, I just used my pre-existing system when I found out how I could interface it with HE and did not have to spend any $. I know mine is more reliable than my dog (but that could just be my dog :joy:). Let us know how it works out for you.