Have you ever wanted Alexa to ask you if the lights should be switched on?
Well now you can do this and much more with Voice Monkey PRO’s newest feature Yes / No prompts, which allow you to trigger an Alexa routine depending on your choice of answer, Yes or No.
Imagine this…
You walk into a room and your motion sensor, senses your presence.
Alexa says: “Hello, would you like me to turn the lights on”
You say: “Yes”
* The lights turn on *
How to do this
It can seem complicated but once you get the hang of it, you can create some powerful automation magic!
For this example, Alexa will ask me whether she should turn on the smart plug linked to my treadmill if a motion detector is triggered.
You can replace the smart plug with anything you like, smart home lights, your Ring doorbell etc etc
I’m going to assume you have already successfully performed a text-to-speech announcement with Voice Monkey.
First, create the action
So we first need to create the Monkey, the Preset and the Routine that we will use to turn on the smart plug.
First create a new Monkey, I’m going to call mine ‘Treadmill Smart Plug Monkey’.
Next, create a Preset using this Monkey.
The Preset will allow me to reference the Monkey in my “YES” prompt.
And now I need to create the Alexa Routine which turns on the Smart Plug when the Preset/Monkey above is triggered.
In the Alexa App, I create a new Routine.
When this happens -> Smart Home -> Treadmill Smart Plug Monkey
Add action -> Smart Home -> Garage Smart Plug -> Power On
Secondly, create your Yes/No trigger Monkey
Go to the playground: https://app.voicemonkey.io/url
Choose the Monkey linked to the Echo device that is going to speak and ask the question.
In the “Announcement text” field, type in your question. For example “Hello, would you like me to turn on the treadmill?”
In the “Prompt YES” field, select the action Preset you created above.
You can then hit the “Send Request” button to test everything is working.
Trigger your Yes/No Monkey
There are multiple ways you could trigger the Monkey you created above. You could copy the URL generated and plug it into IFTTT webhooks or into a Home Assistant automation, or which ever smart home platform you’re using.
For this example, I will be triggering it from within an Alexa routine, whenever my Echo Flex senses motion detection.
To do this, I’m going to save the Parameters I generated above into a Preset called “Treadmill Yes-No Preset”.
I’m going to then use this Preset in my Alexa Routine as follows:
I’m going to give the Routine a name of ‘Treadmill Motion Trigger’.
In the WHEN section I’m going to select Smart Home then my motion trigger which is called ‘Garage motion sensor’.
After that I’m going to add an ACTION. I’m going to use the Custom action.
In here, I’m going to type “ask voice monkey to trigger preset two”
You can find the phrase you need to type in the Presets section of the console: https://app.voicemonkey.io/presets
Then choose the device you wish for Alexa to use, and that’s it, this is what the final Routine looks like:
So now, when my garage sensor detects motion, it will trigger “preset two”, which contains the question announcement ( “Hello, would you like me to turn on the treadmill?” ) and the subsequent Preset which will be triggered if I answer Yes (if I answer No, nothing will happen).
In summary…
Yes/No Prompts are a new tool in your Alexa smart home set-up, but can be hard to understand.
Essentially, you have two components: The action (what you want to happen if you say Yes or No) and The Trigger, which asks the initial question and triggers the action.
First you need to set-up the action which is comprised of a Monkey, which you turn into a Preset, and then you use this Monkey as the trigger in your action Alexa routine.
The trigger is another Monkey which uses an Announcement to ask the question and you use the Preset above as the Yes or No parameter. This trigger Monkey can then be used in your home automation software or triggered from another routine by converting it into a Preset.
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