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Alexa Devices

The Alexa Devices integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] lets you control Alexa-enabled devices connected to your Amazon account.

The integration provides information on connected devices and enables control of the main features.

Supported devices

There is support for the following device families within Home Assistant:

Amazon Echo Auto
Amazon Echo Dot
Amazon Echo Flex
Amazon Echo Plus
Amazon Echo Show
Amazon Fire TV Stick
Amazon Fire Tablet
Third-party devices with built-in Alexa capabilities.

Warning

This integration requires multifactor authentication using an authentication app (such as Microsoft Authenticator, for example). To enable MFA, in your Amazon account settings select Login & Security > 2-step verification > Backup methods > Add new app. See Amazon’s documentation for more information.

You must ensure the authenticator app is setup as your preferred method for 2FA.

Configuration

To add the Alexa Devices hub to your Home Assistant instance, use this My button:

Manual configuration steps

If the above My button doesn’t work, you can also perform the following steps manually:

Browse to your Home Assistant instance.
Go to Settings > Devices & Services.
In the bottom right corner, select the Add Integration button.
From the list, select Alexa Devices.
Follow the instructions on screen to complete the setup.

username

The email address of your Amazon account.

password

The password of your Amazon account.

otp

One-time password via Authenticator App.

Note

When trying to set up the integration, the form may show the message “Cannot connect”. This means that the specified country may need a special setting. Open a issue with all details to investigate

Actions

Available Actions

Available actions: notify.send_message, alexa_devices.send_sound, alexa_devices.send_text_command

Action notify.send_message

Devices with appropriate functionality will have speak and announce notify entities created. These can be used as the target for the notify.send_message action.

Data attribute	Optional	Description
`message`	no	Text to be output (see below for advanced markup)

Tip

When sending notifications to multiple devices, you may experience delays due to rate limiting by Amazon. You can avoid this by sending notifications to speaker groups created in Alexa.

Advanced Message Markup

Amazon provide markup to control not only what is said but how it is said and to add additional option such as pausing and playing certain audio clips. Details of this are covered in Amazon’s documentation where there are lots of examples (just pass everything between the <speak> and </speak> elements into the message parameter of the action).

Audio files must meet certain criteria on size, bit and sample rates and must be served over HTTPS (see documentation for full details). These restrictions make them fine for text and sound effects but you will not be able to play music this way.

Amazon provide a set of sounds you can use which contains the markup you will need for that clip.

Action alexa_devices.send_text_command

This action essentially allows you to control Alexa using text commands rather than speech. You should be able to request anything you would via speech using this action.

Data attribute	Optional	Description
`device_id`	no	Device on which you want to run action
`text_command`	no	Command to send

Action alexa_devices.send_sound

This action allows you to play one of the built-in Alexa sounds. The full list of sounds is available in Amazon’s documentation (needs authentication)

Data attribute	Optional	Description
`device_id`	no	Device on which you want to play sound
`sound`	no	The name of the sound to play

Sensors

The integration creates sensor entities when the connected device exposes that information. Not every device supports every sensor.

Alarm, timer, and reminder sensors

All Alexa-enabled devices have timestamp sensors that show the next scheduled alarm, timer, and reminder along with their labels.

Environmental and device sensors

Temperature
Illuminance
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity

Supported functionality

In addition to sensors, you can use the following entities:

Notify - Speak and Announce notifications
Switch - Do not disturb

Examples

Send announcement when you arrive home

automation:
- alias: "Alexa Announce"
  id: "alexa_announce"
  triggers:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: person.simone
      to: "home"
  actions:
    - action: notify.send_message
      data:
        message: Welcome home Simone
      target:
        entity_id: notify.echo_dot_livingroom_announce

Ask the time

action: alexa_devices.send_text_command
data:
  device_id: 037d79c1af96c67ba57ebcae560fb18e
  text_command: whats the time

Set volume

Note

Once media player functionality is supported you will be able to achieve this through standard media player actions.

action: alexa_devices.send_text_command
data:
  device_id: 037d79c1af96c67ba57ebcae560fb18e
  text_command: volume 7

Control devices in Alexa

action: alexa_devices.send_text_command
data:
  device_id: 037d79c1af96c67ba57ebcae560fb18e
  text_command: turn study lights off

Play BBC Radio 6

action: alexa_devices.send_text_command
data:
  device_id: 037d79c1af96c67ba57ebcae560fb18e
  text_command: play BBC Radio 6

Play a doorbell sound

action: alexa_devices.send_sound
data:
  sound: amzn_sfx_doorbell_chime_01
  device_id: 037d79c1af96c67ba57ebcae560fb18e

Using advanced markup in a notification

action: notify.send_message
data:
  message: >
    Hello, lets have some examples.
    <amazon:emotion name="excited" intensity="medium"> This is me being mildly excited! </amazon:emotion>
    The farmer's dog was called <say-as interpret-as='spell-out'>bingo</say-as>.
    <prosody pitch='high'> I can sing high </prosody> <prosody pitch='low'> and I can sing low </prosody>
target:
  entity_id: notify.study_dot_speak

action: notify.send_message
data:
  message: >
    Stop! <break time='3s'/> Hammer Time. Watch out
    <audio src="soundbank://soundlibrary/scifi/amzn_sfx_scifi_laser_gun_battle_01"/>
    Shields up! <audio src="soundbank://soundlibrary/scifi/amzn_sfx_scifi_shields_up_01" />
    <amazon:effect name="whispered">
      <prosody rate="x-slow"><prosody volume="loud">Enough now</prosody></prosody>
    </amazon:effect>
target:
  entity_id: notify.study_dot_speak

Data updates

This integration pollsData polling is the process of querying a device or service at regular intervals to check for updates or retrieve data. By defining a custom polling interval, you can control how frequently your system checks for new data, which can help optimize performance and reduce unnecessary network traffic. [Learn more] data from the device every 30 seconds by default.

Known limitations

This integration requires multifactor authentication using an authentication app (such as Microsoft Authenticator). To enable MFA, in your Amazon account settings, select Login & Security > 2-step verification > Backup methods > Add new app. See Amazon’s documentation for more information.
Reminders may not be added to the sensor if the configured account is linked to an Alexa Household.

Troubleshooting

Unable to setup

Symptom: “CannotAuthenticate”

Description

You will see MFA OTP code not found on login page or Cannot find "auth-mfa-otpcode" in html source in the logs when trying to set up the integration. This is because the authentication details are incorrect.

You need to ensure you are:

using the right credentials (The ones you would use to log in to the Alexa app and Amazon shopping site)
set up to use app based 2FA
not set up to receive SMS 2FA codes

To test this you should log in to your local Amazon shopping site in incognito/private mode in your browser and check you are prompted for the OTP code from your authenticator app, and you are able to log in successfully.

Sensors unavailable

Symptom: “Too many requests”

You see something similar to

Error retrieving devices state: Too many requests for path ['listEndpoints']
Error retrieving data: CannotRetrieveData('Request failed: Bad Request')

In logs.

Description

This happens because of rate limits applied by Amazon. We are working to reduce these errors. If these errors are causing you issues, you can disable polling for the integration. Disabling polling will stop these errors, but it will also stop DND, sensors, and connectivity from being updated. However, speech, announcements, and text commands will continue to work.

Removing the integration

This integration follows standard integration removal. No extra steps are required.

To remove an integration instance from Home Assistant

Go to Settings > Devices & services and select the integration card.
From the list of devices, select the integration instance you want to remove.
Next to the entry, select the three dots menu. Then, select Delete.

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