Anyone who has used their Echo speaker and Alexa for a while will know that it is a great way to listen to music, hear the news headlines, and even control smart lighting and thermostats. But did you know that Alexa can also be used as a home security enhancement? Yep, that’s right, you can use Alexa to make your home more secure by deterring burglars.
What You Need:
Any Amazon Echo speaker
The Alexa app and account
Burglar Deterrent skill
The Burglar Deterrent Skill
This skill is designed to help protect your home by playing realistic sounds, such as a dog barking, a man coughing, talking, laughing and other normal household (or office) sounds. You can set it to play sounds that are relevant to wherever the Echo speaker is located (Kitchen, living room, office, etc.)
You can also choose the noise activity level, so there is more noise with fewer gaps, less noise with more gaps (more realistic), noice with background music, or no background music.
Setting Up the Burglar Deterrent
Open the Amazon Alexa app on your phone or tablet, tap the menu button and then select “Skills & Games”. Burglar Deterrent was skill of the month, so it was displayed on the Discover screen. If you don’t see it here, tap the search button and type “Burglar Deterrent”. It should be the top search result.
On the skill information screen for Burglar Deterrent, tap the “Enable to Use” button. After a few seconds, the skill will be enabled. You can activate the skill by saying:
Alexa, open Burglar Deterrent
Alexa will now start playing the default soundscape for the skill. You can turn the volume up and down using normal Alexa volume commands.
If you want to set the sounds played for the specific room or location your Echo speaker is in, you can use a variety of different commands:
Alexa, ask Burglar Deterrent to protect the kitchen (living room, office, etc.)
Or
Alexa, ask Burglar Deterrent to sound like a dining room
Or
Alexa, ask Burglar Deterrent for a barking dog
It is not yet possible to activate Alexa skills remotely, or to schedule them, so you will need to remember to enable the Burglar Deterrent before you leave the house. When you arrive back home to your, hopefully, non-burgled house, you can stop the sounds by saying:
Alexa, stop
Or
Alexa, stop Burglar Deterrent
