With the recent update to the Alexa app, Amazon has started slowly expanding the integration between the Ring and Alexa ecosystems. You can now get Ring motion and doorbell alarms through your Amazon Echo devices, similar to the Ring Chime and Ring Chime Pro.
While this functionality is similar to what you get with Ring’s Chime products, there are limitations. Currently, enabling Ring alerts in the Alexa app turns on the alerts for every Echo device in your home. In my case, that’s eight devices, most of which I don’t want shouting that there is motion at my front door at all hours. In the case of Ring Chime, you can specify which Chime will alert, and which device will trigger those alerts. I expect Amazon will have to add that functionality at some point. One other thing to note, Ring alerts are subject to Alexa’s quiet hours on your respective devices, so they will not alert if your schedule has Alexa in quiet mode.
Here’s how to enable Ring alerts in the Alexa app
- First make sure you are running the latest Alexa app on your device. You will find yourself extremely frustrated if you are still running the old app as these features are not available.
- If you haven’t done so already, install the Ring skill by going to the Skills section, searching for Ring, activating the skill and inputting your login information.
- From the home screen, tap the Smart Home icon in the lower right of the screen
- If you’ve never run a device discovery after installing your Ring devices, click the + icon at the top right of the screen, otherwise you may find your devices already listed in the All Devices list and you can skip ahead to step 8.
- Tap Add Device
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and tap Other
- Tap the Discover Devices button and wait for the discovery to run
- If you are not brought to the full list of devices after discovery, from the Smart Home page tap All Devices
- Scroll through the list of devices until you see your Ring device with a webcam icon
- Tap the device to enter settings
- You will see a section called Announcements and depending on the Ring device you will have sliders for Motion, or Motion and Doorbell Press
- Tap the slider to turn on your desired Alexa announcements
- Repeat for any other devices