in general the integration between Amazon Alexa and Samsung
smartthings is very very good but there are a couple of situations that you'll
find that the integration just doesn't work and one of those is trying to
trigger Amazon's Alexa routines with different kinds of sensors sensors other than
motion or contact sensors or other more complex conditions and today I'm going
to show you how to do just that
hello Automators thanks for tuning in again I'm Brian from automate your life
and today I'm going to take the frustration out of automation by helping
you integrate these two products even closer together and give you more power
in your smart home this will save you a ton of time once you've done this once
you can do it about a hundred times and you're going to be able to do amazing
things now we're going to walk through a bit of an explanation because I want to
make sure you understand how this helps and then I will walk through a
demonstration of a couple of ways that you can use this today when you first
integrate Samsung smartthings and Amazon's Alexa voice assistant what you will
find when you go into routines in Amazon's application is that you can
only trigger with two types of sensors that are coming from Samsung system now
those I am talking about our contact sensors and motion sensors those are the
only two you can start a routine with over here so this is a big problem for
those of us with a lot of different sensors and I think about things like
temperature I think about things like light levels and of course things like
leak sensors are a big use case for this we can also use all the different
cameras and other connected devices like door locks and yeah I mean it goes
forever over here one other thing to think about in terms of the usefulness
of this if you have both of these systems Amazon Alexa voice assistant has
access to so many devices that are not available in Samsung smartthings so this
is truly a hack for connecting things like
to you or the whole smart life application into Samsung smartthings and
every robot vacuum that doesn't go in here and that's one of the questions we
got that drove that me to go find this solution the the different video
doorbells and things that don't connect in here as long as they connect in here
you're going to be able to create some amazing integrations now the other thing
that you can do is create very deep and sophisticated automations over here to
trigger this and I mean things where you have three or four conditions and that's
just not possible with Amazon Alexa system as of yet and so that gives you a lot of
power again over here so I think you get the use cases for this but I'm going to
go even deeper and now I'm going to explain a little bit for how this is
going to work what we're going to do is create a device type over here in
Samsung smartthings that is both a contact sensor and a
switch now if you're not familiar with a virtual switch then I have a recommended
video for you down below that shows you what a virtual switch is and what you
can do with it but think of this as a virtual switch on steroids because over
here you can turn it on and off and or you can read the status of open or
closed just like a contact sensor so it has both of those and when it's open
over here on Samsung smartthings then you've turned it on over here on Samsung
smartthings and when you turn it off you can just actually flip a switch and I'll
show you this later in the demo then you're showing that contact sensor as
closed now what's amazing is over here you can do exactly the same thing so you
can read it as open or turned on and you can read it as closed or turned off and
again over here you can read those statuses or you can turn it on or off so
you're able to actually in both systems read the status like a contact sensor
and turn it on and off like a switch so this is one amazing
little device and it's actually not that hard to implement so here's a short
walkthrough of the process I'm going to direct you to a piece of code that we
have now put on automate life dotnet there's a link down below you can grab
that code and then we are going to create what's called a device Handler
and that device handler will call itself a simulated Amazon Alexa voice assistant
switch and when you have created that then you will create a device that uses
that device Handler and that device handler is doing all of this magic and
at that point you have access just by integrating these two systems to that
variable now I'm going to show you the whole process and I'm actually going to
show you a demo that was requested by one of our Automators here that
actually triggered me to go out and find this solution so thanks guys stay tuned
here comes the demo kicking off this demo we're going to start at
account.SmartThings.com and then you are going to have to login with either your
Samsung account or your smart things account now it's likely at this point
you have a smart things account once you've done that we're going to go to
the my device handler section and you probably have never been in here but we
are going to create a new device Handler and we're not going to start from a
template we're gonna start from the code and that's what the link down below in
the description has you heading to to that code right there to copy and paste
it fully into that box now you're just going to hit create and it has all the
information in it you can see we have a simulated Amazon Alexa
voice assistant switch and then we're going to hit the publish button and hit
for me now I don't even know if you have to hit that publish button but I do it
anyways or I did it anyways and it seems to have worked out so now you can see
you have that simulated Amazon voice assist and device handler available to
you now heading into my devices we're going to create a device that actually
uses this device Handler and I'm going to call mine amazing device and I'm
going to put that in both the name and the label I'm going to leave ZigBee ID
alone and then the device network ID cannot have any spaces in it so just put
dashes and your type you're going to scroll all the way to the bottom to find
that simulated Amazon Alexa voice assistant switch and then choose your location and
your hub once you've done all of that don't worry about group and hit the
create button and you are ready with your first device now if you wanted to
you could edit that device if you made any mistakes with the details
again don't worry about the group it doesn't really help you anyways inside
of Samsung smartthings the application which is where we are going to go next
I'm going to scroll all the way to the bottom of my smart home in Samsung
smartthings and there's the device so I tap on it and I can edit where it is in
my home so I can put it into a room now I'm just going to put it at one that
puts it at the top of Samsung smartthings and hit save
from here you can actually turn on and off the device so I'm going to scroll
all the way back up to the top and just hit that little power button now what
you're noticing is it went closed and now when I hit it again it's open but
the closed is off and the open is on so just remember that for later I'll say it
a few times now I've gone into automations and we're going to hit the
if statement and what I'm building here is actually a question from one of our
followers here his name is Brian and he wanted to know how he could get his
shark robot which does not interface with Samsung smartthings directly to
trigger based off of a complex set of if statements that he could create in
Samsung smartthings now he wanted it based on a certain time of day being
passed so after sunset essentially and after everyone had left their home so
with him wanting that situation that's what I'm going to create today but
really you can create any set of if commands here or any set of conditions
to follow so I'm just going ahead and adding these conditions and I'm showing
you that I'm adding whenever no one is at home or basically when these two
phones are not at home and then if I wanted I could add a time delay as well
to have that wait about a minute after I've left so now I can go ahead and hit
next and my if statement is created now I'm hitting the plus on then and we're
going to control the device now the device I'm going to control is my
amazing device
so I'm going to click the check mark there hit next and then I'm going to tap
on that device again and I'm going to turn it on so this is equal to open or
on no we're going to rename the automation name just for our own uses
here and then we're going to hit done and we've created an automation that
after a certain time of day and once everyone has left it will turn on that
switch now if you haven't already integrated Amazon's voice assistant you
have to do that by hitting the plus the voice assistant and then choosing Amazon
and putting in your credentials at that point and that would integrate if you've
already done that then in the menu you want to go into settings and you want to
go into connected services and make sure within Alexa that you
have included the amazing device for integration into amazon's Alexa voice
assistant so i'm going to go into switches and make sure an amazing device
is selected here and hit done now you'll also notice it's in contact sensors as
well that's because it's acting as both of those types of devices so i added it
in there that's not a critical thing but now I have to go to Amazon's Alexa voice
assistant and discover my devices so I've hit done on connected services I've
adjusted that and now when I go over to Amazon's Alexa voice assistant I'm going to
hit the little button down at the bottom and ask Amazon's Alexa voice assistant to
discover my devices after a few minutes I can go into my all devices and I will
find that amazing device and you'll notice that I can actually turn the
device on and off now it's not showing open or closed it's only showing on or
off here in Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and I can see some details if I'd like
within this device now what we're going to do with this is create a routine
because remember Bryan wanted you trigger something so I've gone into
routines and when this happens and this is the amazing part of our amazing
device when I go into smart home there it is
this is a virtual device that is available to be used as a trigger now
when it opens which is the status we would get from Samsung smartthings it
equals on then I can go into all my different smart home devices I can
trigger all kinds of different things to happen so in Brian's case we could turn
on his shark vacuum if we had it here but for my case I'm just going to turn
on my TV and this is just to show you that you can do it now here's that final
routine I could add other steps if I'd like but it's all based on a very
complex Samsung smartthings set of conditions so that's the real power of
this you can have these incredible conditions over in Samsung smartthings
that triggers devices only integratable inside of Amazon's Alexa voice assistant
something you just might want to do is create another automation to actually
reset that device later so this would be say 10 minutes before sunset and what
this would do is reset this device the very next day actually 10 minutes before
sunset and then it would check after sunset if everyone had left it would
then turn on that shark robot vacuum so all I've done is turned off the amazing
device as a result of it being 10 minutes before sunset and in combination
with my other Samsung smartthings automation then what I have is that
amazing device being reset on a daily basis no matter what it's always going
to be turned back to off now a really amazing thing about this type of
simulated device is that it can be used on either the trigger side of Amazon's Alexa
routines or on the action side so for a great example
here you could turn on Amazon's guard by using your voice and then we could turn
on the amazing device so you can see I'm turning it on as a result of guard being
away or setting my Amazon guard to away so what this allows me to now do inside
of Samsung smartthings is use that to synchronize my status now I'm going to
create the other routine where Amazon's guard is set to home then I'm going to
turn off that simulated switch here my amazing device and this gives me both
sides of using Amazon's guard as my security system and when I go into
Samsung smartthings now I just have to create two automations there as well
inside of Samsung smartthings I'm in automations I hit Plus and I choose if
my device status and we're going to choose that amazing device that we just
set on if Amazon's guard is turned to away and then I've chosen the contact
sensor and I've chosen open because that mirrors the on status then we go to then
and we're going to change the security mode so once Amazon's guard has turned
on then this goes all the way and turns on my Samsung smartthings smart home
monitor solution so this is actually a really powerful way to use this device
type but something you could have done with virtual switches before now again I
need the other side of this statement and and we just have to do the exact
opposite if my amazing device has its contact sensor closed then I am going to
turn off or disarm my Samsung smartthings
security monitor or my smart home monitoring system now obviously you
couldn't use one amazing device or one of these simulated devices as both sides
of this equation you couldn't use it in both of these sets of automations but I
think you get the point that now through really complex automations and Samsung
smartthings that you can trigger really great automation and connection to other
devices in Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and that's the big deal here today guys now
of course there is so much more you can do with this guys and I'm sure you're
already chomping at the bit in order to go create all these different
automations that bridge the gap between these two systems you have so many
devices over here in Amazon Alexa voice assistant that are connected and can be
used as actions and I'm sure you want a lot of triggers from the great
conditions that you have over here on Samsung smartthings so I hope this has
helped and if it I think you want to join here in to
automate your life because we have tutorials like this that I think
absolutely open up your smart home and take that frustration rate out of it you
can also watch on screen a couple of different playlists one about Samsung
smartthings and one about Amazon's voice assistant getting the most out of both
of those great systems thanks for watching everyone and of course don't
hate automate