Trigger Alexa Routines With Motion or Person Detection
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Hi,
I would love it if TP-Link Kasa Smart supported the Amazon Alexa Person/Motion Detection API that lets it trigger routines. For example, with Ring or August, if it detects motion, it can link up with Alexa, and Alexa can run the routine to announce on the Echos or turn on Hue lights. See the info on the API from Amazon here https://forums.developer.amazon.com/articles/206950/enhance-the-smart-home-camera-experience-with-pers.html
I've noticed in several reviews on the Kasa Cameras, is that they don't fully support the smart integrations of other ecosystems.
https://homealarmreport.com/security-cameras/cameras-work-amazon-alexa/
"The TP-LINK Kasa Alexa only offers camera features exclusive to Alexa devices with a screen. More specifically, you can watch live videos and review the latest event recording"
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@Carl I appreciate the reply but 6 weeks waiting for a reply just gave me another reason to not buy your products again. They are too isolated. Most other manufactureers allow integration with Smartthings (or someone) and at least IFTTT. Building you own isolated ecosystem is not going to work. Too much risk to put all our eggs/devices in 1 basket and from a control perspective, no one is going to wait years for TP-Link to develop more products much less a fully capable hub like ST and the webCoRE extension. You can't be all things to all people. So decide if you are doing to build great hardware or a great automation hub.
There is a difference between building "cool" things and "useful" things. The mellenials all want to build cool stuff. Your camera is "cool" and decent quality, but sadly not useful except in an isolated consumer market. So if that is your niche, then it would be great if you would say that so us consumers know what we are getting into when we make a purchase decision.
Thanks.
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The delay in the response was due to some system issues. While we try to be active as possible we only have a few admins for the entire community so some threads may get lost in the execution of the day to day operations, espically if an admin is not tagged in a message. We are working on this, for instance we pushed an update that automatically tags the person you are responding to, that way we have more direct visibity of customer's futher interactions with us. We will continue to improve this so that we mitigate the loss message as much as possible.
You mention integrations into other eco-spheres but there are some down sides to that. Firstly the cost. Every integration with a 3rd party software or service cost money, as you know nothing is free. We evaluate every option and in some cases we opt to put that money keep product retial cost down or to developing a more rich experiance for our customers The next thing to consider is that every intergration is another potential security risk. Rather than having to work with just one company and allowing to secure and cotrol your personal eco-sphere you now open it up to more sources and ultimately more chances for comprimises to happen. This is espcially true for security cameras.
We try to be very upfront with a product, its specs and capabilties, including possible intergrations. This information is available on our website and if there is something that isn't available we have support staff available 24/7 to answer your questions.
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@jhtrico1850 it would be great for Kasa to integrate this way. I have 3 kc200s and love them, I also have the ring doorbell, ring alarm, lots of other smart stuff all integrated through Alexa . Since my ring doorbell cam CAN trigger stuff (ring alarm or other third party with Alexa) I am considering buying my next cameras (2 or 3 indoor) with ring instead of kasa. How ever if kasa integrates this feature I would consider kasa again plus use my existing kc200s that way as well! They could integrate vía Alexa or with Ring partners also... hope it does not take for ever!
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Hi Alex. I will deffiatly send it up to the Kasa PM to see if its possible. Though I am not sure of the logistics invovled in intergrating with 3rd party APIs, beyond what we already have. If i get anythign back i will let you know.
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Are there any updates in regards to being able to integrate motion detection with the KC200 to an Alexa routine to simply announce something like, "Someone at the front door." Really like the camera and it has been a great improvement over my older camera. Thanks.
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No, nothing yet. At this time at least as far as I have been made aware the only interaction our cameras have with Alexa or Google Assistant is live view of the stream on thier screen based devices. All other interactions have not been allowed because of secuity concerns about attaching a smart wifi camera to a voice assistant. We will add this to this months request for features to see if an update can be given though.
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@Carl I don't believe they are asking to control the camera via voice just to get the accesable to Alexa so that an annoucement can be made and broadcasted to the Alexa speakers that a motion has been detected. This would make your cameras so much more useful.
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Hi Teylas
That makes more sense. I don't know if that is possible but i will add it to the request form.
thanks for the clarification.
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Is there any update to have Alexa announce when motion is detected with a Kasa camera? This would be a very helpful feature that does not seem difficult to implement seeing as notifications can already be sent via the app.
Additionally, having some sort of alarm feature on the camera's that can be armed with a schedule is a great feature as well
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