Alexa Door bell proactive event not working

Third party integrations
1

Hi,

I’m trying to setup Alexa Proactive events using a binary_sensor so that Alexa will announce when someone is at the door over my Echo.

I’ve set up Alexa with “Send Alexa Events” as per the documentation here: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/alexa.smart_home/#proactive-events

I’m pretty sure the proactive events are working as in the Alexa app I look at one of my light devices that are controlled by Home Assistant - if I switch it ON/OFF from the home assistant front end I see the state change in the Alexa App - I assume that is proactive events working? I also see debug logging push the state to Alexa,

I have a binary_sensor set up as follows:

binary_sensor:
  - platform: template
    sensors:
      front_doorbell:
        friendly_name: "Front Doorbell"
        value_template: >-
          {{
            is_state('input_boolean.front_doorbell', 'on')
          }}

The idea is that I switch the input_boolean when I think someone is at the door and I want Alexa to announce it.

I added the binary_sensor into my alexa config:

alexa:
  smart_home:
    locale: en-GB
    endpoint: "https://api.eu.amazonalexa.com/v3/events"
    client_id: !secret client_id
    client_secret: !secret client_secret
    filter:
      include_entities:
        - binary_sensor.front_doorbell
    entity_config:
      binary_sensor.front_doorbell:
        name: "Front Door"
        display_categories: DOORBELL

Having done all that I can see the binary sensor in the alexa app when I discover devices but it doesn’t have the “Doorbell Announcement” section as shown in the screen shot on the directions: https://www.home-assistant.io/images/integrations/alexa/alexa_app_doorbell_announcement.png

Any ideas what I could be doing wrong? I’m in the UK if that makes a difference?

2

Hmm so looking at this I guess this isn’t available in the UK yet: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/device-apis/list-of-interfaces.html

I wonder if there is way to use it whilst we wait for this to be rolled out here?

3

Did you have any luck with this? en-GB is in the list now.

I’ve tried to set mine up with the same {state: "on"} that I use for lights… but not sure if I should be reverting it to state off straight after or if its even being sent proactively.

Amazon wants to see a payload of cause and timestamp but even sending this doesn’t seem to trigger it.
"payload" : { "cause": { "type": "PHYSICAL_INTERACTION" }, "timestamp": "2020-12-29T23:09:58.128Z" }

Reviving this as there isn’t much on the topic yet as it seems new. Hopefully we can figure this out together.

4

Hi - yes I have this working and get an announcement all the time.

In my alexa.yaml I have:

      binary_sensor.front_doorbell:
        name: "Front Door"
        display_categories: DOORBELL

This is a template binary_sensor configued in configuration.yaml like so:

binary_sensor: 
  - platform: template
    sensors:
      front_doorbell:
        friendly_name: "Front Doorbell"
        value_template: >-
          {{
            is_state('input_boolean.front_doorbell', 'on')
          }}

And the input boolean is configured in configuration.yaml like so (although I believe you can now do this via the UI):

input_boolean:
  front_doorbell:
    name: Front Doorbell

This might be slightly more complex than needed but this is because I use a 433Mhz doorbell using the rfxtrx integration so I just get an event when the door bell is pushed.

So I then have an automation that when the event arrives I set the input_boolean:

- id: '1111'
  alias: Doorbell pushed
  description: ''
  trigger:
  - event_data:
      id_string: 00:00
      packet_type: 22
      sub_type: 2
    event_type: rfxtrx_event
    platform: event
  - entity_id: input_boolean.test_doorbell
    from: 'off'
    platform: state
    to: 'on'
  action:
  - data: {}
    entity_id: input_boolean.front_doorbell
    service: input_boolean.turn_on
  mode: single

And then I have another automation to turn the input_boolean back off

- id: '222'
  alias: Doorbell boolean off
  description: ''
  trigger:
  - entity_id: input_boolean.front_doorbell
    for: 00:00:20
    from: 'off'
    platform: state
    to: 'on'
  condition: []
  action:
  - entity_id: input_boolean.front_doorbell
    service: input_boolean.turn_off
  mode: single
5

It seems that this has stopped working properly now - it works the first time after a Home Assistant restart but then not on subsequent doorbell events - any one else seeing similar?

Raised issue here: https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/47231