Alexa action when contact sensor left open

Tips & Tricks
5

I figured I would post here as it is one of the first things in Google when you look for a way to have Alexa announce if a door is left open. In my case, I wanted to have a contact sensor on the refrigerator trigger an announcement after 2 minutes that the door was still open. Now, in a perfect world, the Alexa app would have a door left open trigger, but it does not, so here we are. The way I was able to get around this was to use an old tablet with the IFTTT and Wyze apps and Voice Monkey Alexa Skill. Now, the key here is that the tablet acts like a bridge for the Wyze app and IFTTT. One would think that the IFTTT skill would have the door left open trigger as well, but it does not either, so this bridge is the missing link.

Here are the steps to follow:

  1. I set up the Wyze app to notify me when the door is left open after 2 minutes.
  2. I then set up a Routine Trigger with Voicemonkey called “Kitchen Door Open”
  3. Then I set up an IFTTT applet to use the Android Device - Notification received from a specific app trigger
  4. Then the action for the IFTTT applet that calls the previously created Voicemonkey Routine Trigger
  5. Now, in the Alexa app, you need to link the Voicemonkey skill and then create a routine triggered by the previously created Voicemonkey Routine Trigger and have it set to announce that the door is left open.

While a little convoluted, you are basically using Voicemonkey as a virtual switch that Alexa can monitor.