Ring Alarm - Turn on GE toggle switch when Alarm triggers?

I have two GE switches connected to Ring. They work fine, but I seem to only have the ability to turn them on and off manually in the app. They can’t be added to groups or activated by motion through linked devices. And they don’t show up in Alexa. Am I doing something wrong?

Sounds like you are doing everything correctly. The Ring app currently features the remote toggling of GE smart switches. While the GE devices are capable of scheduling, scenes and voice control, these features are not yet avaialble in the Ring app. I apologize for any confusion with my previous response, I have shared your interest in these features with the team here.

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@Marley_Ring, can you tell when this features will be enabled? It’s very basic to change state of a smart switch based on triggers (alarm, ring-bell, time of the day, etc).

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Hey @fernacolo! To get more out of your GE smart toggles, switches, etc, look into Alexa routines which will allow them to respond to the time of day, if a Doorbell is rung or senses motion for instance. An Alexa device is not required for this as the Alexa app is capable of carrying out these routines.

At this time there is no feature which changes the state of the switch based off of the Alarm mode, nor can a routine be made based off of security state (Disarmed, Home, Away). Our team is constantly working on features like this, and we are always looking to improve on smart home automation. I’ve shared the ongoing interest in this feature with the team :slight_smile:

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I’ve been told by your support employees that ‘Yes’ it will turn the lights on when the alarm goes off and then others say ‘No way’… bottom line ALEXA people also cannot get the GE smart switch to work other than to manually turn on/off. come on guys, this is less than 50 lines of code to write to have this switch turn on when the alarm goes off.

Can we use IFTTT to access the GE switch ?

If IFTTT can see the GE switch that is connected to Ring-Alarm, then we can build some routines around that.

I’m looking to connect IFTTT with Ring-Alarm and Date/Time so that it will turn on the GE outlet (via Ring-Alarm) at sunset.

Ring-Alarm team - Please advise:

1 - Can IFTTT see what Ring-Alarm is in “alarm” ?

2 - Can IFTTT control a GE switch that is connected to Ring-Alarm.

Thanks

Brian

This would be most helpfull…any word yet on this?

Excuse my ignorance, but is there a way to group and schedule events with ring?

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Absolutely none…would seem to be a capability that would be universally needed/accepted.

I have gone down the road of integrating smartthings with ring, see https://github.com/asishrs/smartthings-ringalarm. However, this also requires webcore in order to control other devices based upon alarm status. It’s still a work in progress…

NB - don’t think about using two-factor authentication if you try to integrate with smarthings…

It looks like Simple Commands will do this.

I added a routing to say “When the Ring Alarm goes off / alerts, turn on all the lights”.

I haven’t triggered it yet but it should work.

It only took 5 minutes to setup with Simple Commands app on my iphone.

I’m just trying to add a strobe light and a real alarm that can be heard more than 10 feet from my house…I have an alarm system that is embarrassing… No one can hear it unless your inside my home… Yeah that is impressive

Would be interested if this has actually worked when triggered.

Based on Ring architecture, seems unlikely, unless something has changed.

I have this working with SimpleCommands integration…

SimpleCommands can sing when ring alarm is in “alarm” state, then it just turns on my lights.

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Downloaded simple commands … They want my ring log in info!!! I switched over to the two password log in … I’m not comfortable giving a third party full access to my alarm …

Agreed… That’s why I created a 2ng Ring account, added it to my house Ring Alarm, and reduced a whole bunch of access.

That 2nd account is what SimpleCommands uses to do things with Ring Alarm (yet that 2nd account has no access to cameras, etc…)

@AMM112 wrote:
Downloaded simple commands … They want my ring log in info!!! I switched over to the two password log in … I’m not comfortable giving a third party full access to my alarm …

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I recently added the Ring Indoor Cam, and bought a GE Smart Switch since I amazingly don’t yet have the Modes update pushed to my account.

Functionality is basic within the Ring app–you can pretty much only turn the switch on and off.

HOWEVER, if you install the Amazon Alexa app on your cell (I have no other Alexa devices… no Dot, no Echo… you don’t need one to do this): Link your Amazon account to Ring by adding the Ring Alexa Skill. Then, I’ve created 3 Alexa Routines for that GE Smart Outlet which I named “Indoor Cam Power.” I have it setup so if I arm my Ring alarm to Away mode, Alexa also powers on that GE plug, therefore applying power to the Indoor cam. Likewise, when I disarm the alarm, Alexa then powers off that switch. Works PERFECTLY.

–hope this helps

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Thanks 5150Joel for the input and using Alexa along with your ring system…I did try using Alexa myself and even had their tech support give it a go but so far no one has been able to get my GE switch to come on when the alarm is tripped…I need this switch to do that because ring siren is terrible… No one outside the house can hear it…I need to add a real siren and hopefully a stone light so that people driving by can hear and see my house is compromised. I’m embarrassed to tell anyone that I have a ring alarm that can not be heard when tripped… It’s a joke… My barking dog is louder than their siren… And the add on one… That one is even more of a joke

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@AMM112 wrote:
Thanks 5150Joel for the input and using Alexa along with your ring system…I did try using Alexa myself and even had their tech support give it a go but so far no one has been able to get my GE switch to come on when the alarm is tripped…I need this switch to do that because ring siren is terrible… No one outside the house can hear it…I need to add a real siren and hopefully a stone light so that people driving by can hear and see my house is compromised. I’m embarrassed to tell anyone that I have a ring alarm that can not be heard when tripped… It’s a joke… My barking dog is louder than their siren… And the add on one… That one is even more of a joke

Sorry about that… I obviously misread or misunderstood your post of what you wanted to try and achieve. I’m not sure what you’re after is possible at this time.

Hi Brian,

Finally got back to this. Using simple commands would be a lot easier than the smarthings/webcore approach. Unfortunately, Simple Commands is NOT seeing the state change for Ring when the alarm is triggered. It can see and issue commands to change the Ring state to armed home/armed away/siren on/siren off etc, but when the alarm is triggered, there is no change in state so the routine I wrote to turn on lights and set off a utilitech siren does not execute.

Did you turn off two-factor authentication to get this to work?

I have seen a thread, https://simplecommands.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360034851934-Ring-Alarm-Triggers that seems to confirm that ring triggers are not working in simple commands.

What am I missing?

Gary

Update. Seems to be working now.

I had set up a simple routine to turn on a smarththings lamp when a ring motion sensor triggered. Suddenly, about 4-6 hours after creating the routine, the light went on when I entered the room.

So today I turned off PM again and tested my Ring alarm routine. Worked like a charm, turning on two lights and setting off a Utilitech siren.

Will continue to test periodically, but Simple Commands seems to be the simplest solution!

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