You’d think Amazon’s Ring home security system and Amazon’s Echo smart speakers would work smart, right? I would be very wrong, but today the company is taking another small step towards bringing them together by allowing them to arm, disarm, and check the status of some Ring, ADT, Honeywell, Abode, and Scout security systems just by asking Alexa. to do it
And since I recently bought a Ring Alarm for my own home, Dan convinced me with his review, I decided to give the new functionality a spin this afternoon.
It’s a pretty simple integration, honestly. Install the Ring skill from the Skill Store in your Alexa app, make sure Alexa can see your alarm system, and then you can use the following commands (in the United States):
- Alexa, arm ring
- Alexa, set Ring to Home / Away
- Alexa, is the ring armed?
- Alexa, take the ring apart
It’s a little easier than opening the Ring app, waiting for it to connect to the Alarm base station and hitting a button, but just a little bit, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to tell which of your doors or sensors have tripped. of the window.
Yes, the disarm the command only works if you explicitly enable it on the skill settings page and also say your pin, which makes sense, because you wouldn’t want a thief to just yell “ALEXA, DISARMED RING” from outside your house before come in.
Amazon announced today that it is also opening up its Security Panel Controller API to other device manufacturers, so you can probably expect the list of supported alarms to expand.
Amazon is also rolling out an invite-only preview of its Alexa Guard feature today, which gives Alexa the ability to hear if a glass window is broken, or a fire alarm sounds, and alerts you immediately. That was also useful for Ring owners, as Ring does not yet offer sensors for breaking windows.
If you’d like to sign up for notifications on when you can try Alexa Guard, you’ll also find it in the Alexa app> Settings> Guard> Notify me when available.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out there are A couple of other limited ways Ring can work with Amazon’s voice assistant today. You can ask Alexa to display your Doorbell Doorbell video on an Echo Show or Fire TV (which is not an exclusive Doorbell feature) and you can also use an Echo as an additional doorbell ringer.
