Alexa integration tips and tricks

I just mentioned the notification thing so that other people reading this would know that they don’t have to do that when using Alexa devices.
You are basically getting a notification when the thing starts talking anyway.
I don’t use Google I have one of those minis somewhere has n’t been plugged in for a long time.
The notification setting for person announcement in Alexa for a wyze camera is separate from a routine you set that in Alexa after you select the individual camera

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I think you can do this without having two echo devices within earshot of each other if preferred. It might even work if you had no echo devices and only had a firestick.

To do this use the “Customized” option at the very bottom and enter the command “show (cam name) on (device name)”

The “customized” basically does whatever phrase you input as if you actually spoke it out loud without actually having to say it.

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Good idea
@Mods if you could move the posts about Alexa and declutter this thread it would be great , thanks
Here Alexa integration tips and tricks

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Dude, you’re a genius! It totally works! No announcement necessary, go straight to streaming the cam on any Alexa Device without a verbal command! This is awesome!

  1. Set up an Alexa Routine using the “Person Detection” Trigger of the Wyze Cam in question.
  2. Set the Routine Action using the “Customized” action, and just tell it “Show [Cam name]” (alternatively you can tell it which device to show it on if you want, but this isn’t always necessary).
  3. Set the Device/From/Respond From section at the bottom of the routine to be the device you want it to show on (I set it as my Office Display for example).

The first time I tested this, it started to load, then another routine cut it off (I have another routine that announces “Knock-Knock” when it sees a person on my front porch, so this routine cut off and canceled the streaming routine…this is good to know!) I then canceled the "Knock-Knock Routine from broadcasting on my Office Display and tried again:

  1. This time I started a stopwatch as I did the following: Opened my front door and waved in front of the cam on my front porch, then ran back to the Alexa Show and waited.
  2. 19 seconds after I first started opening the door: The screen switches to say “Waiting for Wyze”
  3. Within a second or two, Alexa says “Okay” as if I actually gave her a verbal command (but it was the customized automation command).
  4. 32 seconds after I first started opening the door: The cam was up live on the Echo Show.

Pretty dang cool. GREAT JOB EVERYONE! This is an AWESOME benefit to automating Wyze Cams to automatically show cams when they detect people. You could keep track of your kids while you work, or always see who’s at the front door when someone starts to walk up, or whatever. I am going to set up an Alexa Show right by Front Door to always automatically load the front cam (and eventually automatically load the Video Doorbell Cam) so I can see on the screen who it is at the door before I even open it or look out. This is incredible work!

Special thanks to @HDRock & @kjay for brainstorming and help & @FritzThird for the initial idea and now posting a video example for the FireTV. This is AWESOME!

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No problem! I can’t take full credit since a user posted this method somewhere else. If you have a sense motion sensor you can get it to load a lot faster as the trigger is instant and you dont have to wait for a clip to upload and AI to be run on the cloud before getting a trigger.

I actually dont have this active right now as I dont want to use my TV for this. I was considering maybe using an old monitor and getting another firestick to dedicate for this or maybe a fire tablet (wasnt sure if a fire tablet would work with this method).

It’s a shame the google hub is so inferior at the moment for this purpose since I already have one that is ideally placed for this.

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@Mods - guessing the best breakpoint on those posts dedicated to Alexa are:

https://forums.wyze.com/t/wyze-cam-v3-now-available-10-27-20/138796/971

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Yeah, I used to use a sensor near my porch to trigger faster, but have needed a replacement for months because that one died and V1’s have been unavailable, so when the new ones get here, I will do that…after waterproofing it :slight_smile:

I have heard/read you can do some stuff with Googles using webhooks, but I tried some of the instructions and walkthrough for such things, and couldn’t get any of them to authenticate, and I’m not a techno-n00b by any means…so I’m sure it can be done, it’s just really complex.

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I used webhooks with IFTTT for a while before the V1 sense was integrated with alexa routines. After using alexa routines I don’t think i would use another service that wasn’t as simple or straight forward to implement. Too much work and this stuff is suppose to get easier :sweat_smile:.

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I set it up with the custom, then the last step you have to select which device Alexa will respond from and I just selected the fire tablet, walked in front of the camera , the tablet says OK and then shows the camera view, no echo dots involved :+1:
EDIT : BTW when the action is activated it will wake up a dark fire tablet and then show the camera

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Nice! I might need to shop for a fire tablet then.

@carverofchoice

if you want to keep the knock knock thing you can try something like this. The change device volume command is there to cause a ~1 sec delay before the next action (may not be necessary but sometimes I have multi action routines fail midway without a slight pause). Alexa has a wait command but the minimum interval is 5 sec:

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That’s a good tip. I noticed the delay was 5sec minimum too. The problem is that the routine was the action: messaging - send announcement - to all devices… So it wasn’t just directed to the one cam. I’m not sure if the same routine can run 1 action for all echos, then a second action for just 1 echo because there should just be 1 option per routine for which device(s) that routine uses.

Worst case scenario I could do a separate routine for each individual echo device to say knock knock then have the office display show the cam, but that’s a little tedious. We’ll see. I’ll test it out during the daytime sometime. Thanks for the tip on the shorter delay!

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Do you mean like this? The ability to send an announcement to every Echo device?

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I have Alexa showing my cameras on a Fire Stick, no problem and so far no time out.
The same cameras connected to the same Alexa account on my Fire HD 8 tablet gives the “Your Alexa enabled device does not currently support that.” message. It did work once.

Edit
Alexa timed out at ~3.5 hours this morning.

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Isn’t this the best and quickest way for most users to have Wyze display on FireTV or other display?

No. All that does is announce Person Detection on you selected Alexa device(s).
This only works if Alexa sees your camera as Person Detection enabled. 3 of mine are, 5 are not.

Much appreciated for your reply. I like creating my own routines, so I didn’t know that part was limited. Maybe they will update that part of the app to make it easy for those that don’t create their own routines.

It’s very easy with the Fire Stick voice remote. Push the button and say “Show the Driveway”. :slightly_smiling_face:

You are right. It couldn’t be any easier than asking Alexa.

Amazon Fire TV’s upcoming user interface upgrade is going to be great for us Wyze Cam users. Picture-in-picture - Amazon’s redesigned Fire TV software starts rolling out…

More information here: Introducing the All-New Fire TV Experience - Completely redesigned to make finding and enjoying your fave content even easier

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That is nice. I hope they roll out the same thing to the Echo Show devices. Right now it is really annoying when I have an Echo show device play a video for my baby while I do some work, only to have an automation interrupt the video to tell me it detected a person, pausing my daughter’s video and sometimes not even going back to the video afterward, and things get complicated because I don’t know what to ask for to get it to pick up with where it left off in which show.

I like having the automations 90% of the time, but sometimes they really interfere with other things I’m trying to use the Alexa devices for. Hopefully these same upgrades will eventually roll out to the echo devices too.

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