Possible to send an Notification to The Alexa App on Your Phone

Configuration
1

Hi,

I use the Alexa media player integration for all of my Alexa devices. This works great. I have also set up the Alexa actionable notification skill so that I can trigger Alexa to ask me a question and I can answer ‘yes’ or 'no. Again this works fine.
What I would like to do is use the Alexa actionable notification to notify my phone when I drive in close proximity of my home so that it can ask me if I want to open the garage. I currently have it setup up to open my garage when in close proximity and only at certain time etc to keep it more secure.
I want to open this up so that it always asks when in range but only actions it if I say yes.
The problem is that my Alexa phone app does not appear in the list of devices under the Alexa media Player integration.
Can anyone tell me if this is possible?
It would just generally be quite cool to be able to get notifications in the car.
thanks

2

there should be an alexa media player entity for your phone if you have the alexa app set up on it.

mine is called “media_player.this_device” (I can’t seem to figure out how to change it in the alexa app to something more informative tho).

3

@finity Do you actually have media player entities in HA for your mobile Alexa apps? I know I used to, but they disappeared quite a while ago.

If I remember correctly this used to be possible, but Amazon locked it out in Fall '20.

You can use the Home Assistant companion app for actionable notifications.

1 Like
4

I do. I only have it on one phone but it is still in HA for that one.

i just tested it this morning before I replied here and an Alexa Actionable Notification announcement came thru on my phone with no issues.

I didn’t actually test a reply tho so I can’t say for sure that part would work.

5

Thanks for the replies. I don’t have a media player device in HA for my phone.
I could use an actionable notification to HA on my phone but I want to use my voice as I’ll be returning from work etc so hands free would be good. Otherwise I’d need to grab my phone, unlock it, swipe down and hope I click the notification correctly :slight_smile:
I do have a Roav Viva but that only outputs sound if the car is in Bluetooth mode I believe.

6

Did you try using a Text-To-Speech notification?

EDIT: Nevermind, didn’t read the whole thing. You want it to ask you a question that you respond yes or no to verbally not just read some text to you. Yea actionable notifications can’t do that.

So I think the easiest solution here would be to have HA trigger an Alexa routine. Which you can do but its a little tricky. In this case what I think you should do is this:

  1. Create a trigger template binary sensor like this:
template:
  - trigger:
      # I'm guessing what your trigger is, change this to whatever you use
      platform: zone
      entity_id: person.ben
      zone: zone.home
      event: enter
    binary_sensor:
      name: Alexa open garage
      device_class: garage_door # This is really important! More in a sec
      state: 'on'
      auto_off: '00:00:01'
  1. Expose the binary sensor to alexa.
  2. In alexa, after syncing, go to create a new routine. For trigger choose “smart home”. Your binary sensor should show up as an option, set the trigger to “when it opens”. Have your routine send an actionable notification
  3. Create routines to handle yes and no responses however you need to

Then when you approach your house this binary sensor will briefly turn on. This triggers your alexa routine and you get your notification

So why is device_class: garage_door important?

Because of this. Alexa is able to trigger routines from state changes but only from state changes in specific types of devices (contact and motion sensors). HA only exposes binary sensors of specific device classes as contact and motion sensors to alexa so you must select one of the listed device_classes to be able to trigger routines from its state change.

It’s a bit weird I know since this binary sensor won’t actually match the state of your garage door. Really you can pick any of the device classes listed in that doc, it doesn’t matter in this case. I just picked garage door since this was about a garage.

7

Sorry it is possible to get Alexa to ask you a question and you just respond with a yes or no and then the action is triggered in HA. See here You need to setup the Amazon skill to do this. I have that working and it works with any media_player device. I just don’t have a device in my car that I can do it with as my phone isn’t registered as a media player in HA and my Roav Viva needs to be on all the time (head unit on Bluetooth mode) for that to work.

8

Hello guys. Sorry to bother. I already configured the Alexa Media Player and all my echo dots are working. I also have the Amazon Alexa application on my phone, but unfortunately I don’t have any phone media player entity in HA.

Can you please help me how to add it ?

Thank you :pray: