Arming a Honeywell Alarm System Using Alexa

Hey, DIY-ers. I'm Jorge from AlarmGrid. Today, I'm going to be showing you guys how to arm your system using Alexa. So I have my Alexa here and I'm actually be demonstrating with my Lyrics system today. So a couple of things that I want you guys to understand about the Alexas. All right, so this Alexa will allow you to arm your system to stay or wait. It will allow you to run any scenes. However, it will not allow you to disarm the system. Why? That's a security risk of a burglar-- Happy to help. If you want me to start guarding your home, you can say, Alexa, set up guard. If a burglar's standing outside of your house and he yells out, hey Alexa, tell Total Connect to disarm my system, then he could basically break into your house very easily if that was allowed by Total Connect. However, Honeywell developers have not allowed this so you have no need to worry about this. You only be able to use Alexa to arm and arm away or arm stay and to run any scenes, and you can also ask for the status of the system. So the first thing you need to do in order to get this setup is you need to make sure you have your Alexa account up and running, and then you have to find the Total Connect 2.0 skill on Alexa. I'm going to show you guys how to do that right now. All right, so I'm doing this on my iPad. It's going to be the same if you guys are using Android or Apple devices. The first thing you want to go ahead and do is make your way over to your Amazon Alexa app. If you haven't downloaded it, you want to make sure you download it, create your account, get logged in, pair it to the Wi-Fi, do everything you have to do. But after you have all of that , I'm going to go to in the top-left corner. There's like a little hamburger sign through the little vertical bars-- horizontal bars, sorry. You're going to hit the Menu button, and you're going to go to Skills and Games. When you go to the Skills and Games, top-right corner, you're going to want to go to your skills. And since I already have the Total Connect enabled, Total Connect 2.0, I'm going to go ahead and click on that. And I'm just going to disable it so I can show you guys the login process. So if you guys just downloaded the Total Connect 2.0 skill on Alexa, you guys have to enable it. It's going to ask-- it's going to say, account linking required. So you're going to have to have your Total Connect login information on hand so that you can pair your Total Connect 2.0 with the Alexa app. So I'm going to go to enable. It's basically going to open up Honeywell Total Connect 2.0's login page. I'm going to go out and enter in my username here and then you want to enter in your password. So I'm going to hit log in. After you hit log in, you have to allow. And then it's going to give you a list of devices that you can connect. So you're going to go ahead and hit connect. Now, just so you know, these cameras that you're seeing on this page, they are not going to work on the Alexa app, just so you know. Again, remember, Alexa is just used to arm-- Alexa is just used to arm your system, check the status of your system, and run any scenes that you may have programmed into the system. So you'll see there, Total Connect has been successfully linked. It actually gives you an example of something you can ask. For instance, Alexa ask, Total Connect, what is the status of my security system? And Alexa should let you know. So now that I have this setup, I'm just going to go ahead and close out of it. First thing I'm going to do is ask the status of my system. Hey Alexa, ask Total Connect the status of my system. Your security system is currently set to disarm ready. All right, the system is set to ready to arm and it's disarmed. If I want to arm it away, I can say, hey Alexa, ask Total Connect to arm system away. It takes a little bit for the command to go through. OK, I am sending the armed away command to your security panel. On the Lyrics screen. Arm away. Exit now. And then I also get a notification through my homekit and through my Total Connect that the system has been armed. Now remember, you can't disarm using Alexa, so if you do that, you actually have to open up your Total Connect app, or at the panel, disarm, entering your code, mine is defaulted. All right. You can also have it run in easy wave scenes. So for instance, I have one scene named vacation, so I can say, hey Alexa, ask Total Connect to run vacation. OK, I'm running vacation scene. It armed vacation scene. When I'm on vacation, I want my system to be armed away. So you see the Lyric system starts to arm away exactly how the scene says. And then if you have any Z wave lights, you can program the lights to turn off into the scene, locks to lock, et cetera. There's a whole bunch of different Z wave devices you can incorporate into your scene. So let me disarm. Disarmed. Ready to arm. Now, some of you may be wondering what happens if the system is not in a ready-to-arm mode. What if you have an open window and open door? I've actually setup a scenario for that as well. I'm going to open up my front door sensor. Front door. My system is now in a not-ready-to-arm, and if I try arming through Alexa, it will not allow it. Hey Alexa, ask Total Connect-- hold on. Hey Alexa, ask Total Connect to arm system away. I can't stay armed away right now. To arm, you need to make sure all your doors and windows are closed. Then use your security panel or the Total Connect app to arm your system. So it actually lets you know that it cannot arm because the system is not in an arm-ready mode, which means you then have to make sure all your doors and windows are closed just like Alexa said. All right, so we've gone over how to arm the system away, stay, how to run scenes on the system, and we've even showed you how to check the status. Now, I want to show you guys that it cannot disarm. If someone to go in and armed the system away, and then I'm going to ask Alexa here to disarm the system. All right, so give me one second. I'm going to go ahead and arm this system to away. While it's arming, I'm now going to tell her to disarm. Hey Alexa, ask Total Connect to disarm the system. For your security, the Total Connect skill can't disarm your alarm. To disarm, please use the Total Connect through mobile app or disarm directly on your security panel. So that shows you that she cannot disarm the system. You actually have to use your Total Connect app or disarm from the actual system itself. All right, so that is just a quick video on how to play around with Alexa and your alarm system. If you guys have any questions whatsoever, feel free to email us at support@alarmgrid.com. If you found the video helpful, make sure you hit like underneath, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and enable notifications so whenever we upload new content, you guys get notified. I'm Jorge, and I'll see you guys next time.