How to use a Wyze sensor for safety alerts in your smart home

On our most recent IoT Podcast episode, Don called in and left a message on our voicemail hotline about his Wyze products. He wants to use a Wyze sensor to alert him when his curious 16-month old grandson opens the basement door. This is for safety reasons as there are basement stairs. Ultimately, Don wants to have the Wyze sensor alert him via his Google Home smart speakers.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to do exactly that. Why? Because natively, Wyze products can’t be trigger events for Google Home alerts. However, there are some options with third-party services or other devices that can help.

Don can use the Wyze sensor to trigger Wyze bulbs to go on or go off. Indeed, I tested this scenario by setting up a rule in the Wyze app to flash bulbs on and off from a Wyze camera when it sees motion. This is a good proxy test as I don’t have a Wyze sensor. And it does work. But the lights do flash rather quickly so this alert may not be seen.

An alternative option is to connect Wyze with IFTTT, provided Don has some other devices supported by IFTTT. With this connection, the Wyze sensor data could trigger music on a Sonos device, for example: When the song plays, Don would know that the basement door has opened.

If Don was using or wants to use an Amazon Echo device, he could set up a custom “Alexa says….” routine.

This is easy to do in the Alexa mobile app and his Wyze sensor could be the trigger event. You can customize the action based on that trigger to have Alexa say something like, “The basement door has been opened.”

This is basically what Don wants on his Google Home, but of course, requires an Echo device. And Alexa will only speak the alert on a single Echo, not throughout the house on multiple speakers. Still, this solution is worth considering.

To hear Don’s question in full, as well as our discussion, tune in to the IoT Podcast below: