Amazon’s Alexa service supports multiple third party smart home services with its routines and skills features. One of those - of course - is Ring, which is itself an Amazon company.
By using the skills and routines features you get tight integration between Ring doorbells and cameras, and the Echo speakers or Echo Show smart screens. In this guide we’ll show you how to make the most of that.
Getting started
First of all you’ll need to have a Ring device and you’ll need to have an Amazon account to use Alexa. You’ll need to have everything setup and connected to your home network, and you’ll need theRing Skill enabledin your Alexa app.
This will allow Alexa to see your Ring devices and figure out what they can do.
Creating an Alexa Routine for Ring
Alexa Routines are pretty easy to make, following the step-by-step process in the Alexa app.
If you select doorbell:then pressing the doorbell becomes your trigger. Save that.
If you select motion:you have the option of an action occurring when motion is detected or when motion isn’t detected for a period of time. This allows you to have “no movement” as a trigger. For example, you may turn a light on when movement is detected, and then have it turn off when no movement is detected.
Once you’ve saved your trigger action move to the next steps to tell Alexa what to do when the trigger is activated.
There’s a whole range of options here - that might be Alexa saying something when the doorbell is pressed, it might be turning on lights or changing the colour. You can even have the Routine use other smart home devices, if they are compatible with Alexa. For instance, if you want Alexa to announce something, you can tap “Send Announcement”.
If you want a smart light bulb to light up, change colour or change brightness to give you a visual indicator that someone’s at the door, tap “Smart Home” and choose the light you want to respond to the trigger.
Once you’ve saved an action you may add other actions to make a more complex sequence. Remember to press save in the top right-hand corner.
Alexa Routines provides a lot of options and the great thing is you’re able to experiment to get the actions you want happening. Everything will be listed in the Routines section of the Alexa app and it’s easy to delete a Routine if you decide it’s not doing the right thing.
We have, for example, Routines to announce when someone is at the door which plays through our Amazon Echo devices so there’s no need for a Ring Chime, but the options are quite literally endless.
Make sure you also read ourtips and tricks on how to get the most out of your Ring Video Doorbell.
