How to utilize Alexa's room detection to display a card on that closest tablet? Let me explain

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** I have also posted this on Home Assistant - Discord **

Hello!

If this question would be better suited somewhere else, please let me know and I will move over there.

The reason I chose automation is because I want to create an automation that will show me a particular room on a tablet that would be standing next to. For example: I am in my bedroom (I have a tablet in every room), and I want to see the livingroom on that tablet.

I have created pop ups for each room that is a photo of the room and it has various things I can tap on, such as lights, plugs, curtains, etc, that I can control. I want the ability to show the particular room on the individual tablet, and not on all the tablets in the house.

So far, I have been able to do this by selecting the individual tablet in the automation. But of course, this isn’t what I am looking for. Meaning, I have set it up to show the livingroom on my desktop (using browser_mod), but it’s not helpful if I am in my bedroom and want to see the livingroom card. I have to be on my desktop in order to see the automation work.

All that said, isn’t there a way to piggyback off of Alexa’s room detection, or whatever it’s called, where she recognizes which device you are closest to, and using that detection, have the appropriate tablet display what I am asking for?

It seems to me there is should be a way, albeit, reading a sensor that gets activated by the Alexa device and then being pre-programmed to display on the nearest tablet.

Seems rather simple, but like everything else with Home Assistant, it never is. But very rewarding when you accomplish what you are wanting.

Thanks for your time and hope to hear back with some suggestions!! Cheers!

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You can get ‘Alexa last called’ from Alexa.

But realize that Amazon really doesn’t want to let people play in it’s walled garden and it’s a game of cat and mouse with thw Alexa Media Player integration… This feature is one that seems to. Come and go lately as Amazon changes stuff on thier end. Not to mention it only works after you have a voice utterance.

Personally it’s not near robust enough for me for what I need in room tracking. Therefore esp32 devices everywhere (a couple bucks each) turned into ESPHome BLE proxies and the Bermuda integration from HACS. Doesn’t rely on cloud, is actively being developed and improved monthly. Took me about two weeks and 45 bucks for rudimentary tracking in three rooms. And now I’m in deploy mode getting one to two rooms a day.

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Thanks @NathanCu! One other person in Discord also suggested using Proxies and Bermuda! So I am going to look into that.

With ESP devices, I have shied away from them because I can never tell what one would be a good device. Seems very foreign to me. What device(s) are you using? Do you have any links to the devices on line I can take a look at?

Will I have to flash them? This is another reason I haven’t delved into them too - I am nervous to flash devices. I have bricked so many things over the years.

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I buy he cheapest d1 mini esp32 I can get on Amazon. Don’t over think it. Go to the esphome sites pick out a reference board listed and buy a handful. They’re cheaper than coffee. Shellys also work if you have a few. They can be both relays and proxies.

(also I’m intentionally moving everything away from Amazon, the only thing I use the for anymore except buying stuff is voice. And as they’re actively working on thier own ai they’re about to try to sell to us I strongly suspect standard voice support to become… Very much progressively not as good as the ai paid alternative… If you catch my drift.)

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Thanks for the advice! Definitely worth looking into!

**Update: for now, I think I may have a workaround. So far it’s working!

I created a input_boolean using the name of the room I am in, then saying what card I want to display.

Ex: input_boolean.show_me_kitchen_to_livingroom

I expose that to AMP.

I create a routine in AMP that when I say, “Alexa, Kitchen - Show Me The Livingroom” it triggers that boolean to ON. Based on that trigger, I then use browser mod to display Livingroom on the Kitchen tablet.