Connecting The Lyric Alarm System to Alexa

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, DIYers. I'm George from Alarm Grid. Today I'm going to be showing you guys how to connect your Lyric Alarm System to Alexa. So the first thing we need to go over is the Lyric system does need to have an active Total Connect 2.0 account in order to connect it to Alexa. Now Total Connect 2.0-- it's an application that you get from your alarm company. For those of you who are monitored with us, you know that Total Connect is pretty much included in almost every single one of our plans. It's the Honeywell, or Resideo app that allows you to go ahead and control your alarm system from your phone or from a website. Now the reason why you need Total Connect 2.0 is because Alexa doesn't actually integrate directly with To-- with the Lyric Alarm System, it actually has a Total Connect 2.0 skill that you need to enable on your Alexa app and I'm going to show you guys how to do that in a second. And in order to have Total Connect 2.0, you need to have an active service with an alarm company for your Lyric Alarm System. Now some companies out there only offer you the application with central station monitoring. Companies like us have central station monitoring with the app and then we also have self-monitoring plans if you don't want central station. So if all you want is just the app, we do offer that. And if you guys want to find out more, you guys can always contact us. So now I want to go ahead and get into the actual pairing of the Total Connect accounts and with the Alexa app. So the first thing you want to go ahead and do is get your tablet, your iPhone, your Android, your smart device, whatever device you're using. You need to open up the App store or the Play Store. You're going to want to go in and download Amazon Alexa. You're going to log in using your credentials. Mine will automatically be logged in. So I'm just going to go ahead and get my iPad ready here, one moment. All right, so I already have the app downloaded, so I'm just going to search for it. As you see right there, Amazon Alexa comes up in my Siri suggestions. So I'm going to go ahead and open up Amazon Alexa. It should take you to the home screen if you've already logged in and if you have your auto log in. If you don't, you just need to log in. From there, if you look towards the top left, there's a little menu icon. It's like a hamburger sign, three horizontal lines. I'm going to hit that. And the first thing you need to do is go to skills and games. You're going to search all skills and you're going to type in Total-- mine already starts auto populating it-- but, just in case, I'm going to type in Total Connect 2.0. Now you need to make sure-- you need-- you type in Total Connect 2.0, not Total Connect Comfort, not anything different-- Total Connect 2.0 is what you need a search for. Once I have that typed in, I'm going to hit Search. And you're going to get two things that come up. Notice how the second one says Honeywell Total Connect Comfort. That is not the one that we want. We want Total connect 2.0. Now once you get that, you do need to enable the skill. Once you enable the skill, you need to log in using your Total Connect 2.0 credentials. If you do not have Total Connect 2.0 credentials yet, this will not work. You need to get the system activated and you need to get your log in information for Total Connect 2.0 first. So after you verify that you have your Total Connect log in information, and you've done all of that, and you've downloaded the skill, you've enabled it, you're now at the linking process. So right now what the-- Alexa's trying to do is it's trying to have you log in with your Total Connect 2.0 credentials that way you can link in the application and it could integrate-- it could-- they can integrate together. All right, so after you've entered in your user name and your password during the Total Connect log in integration on the Amazon Alexa, it's now asking you if you want to allow, basically, Honeywell to share all the-- pretty much all the devices or the status of your system, the arming, the Z-Wave devices. You're obviously going to want to hit allow if you want to integrate them. So I'm going to go ahead and hit allow. And now it's going to bring up a whole bunch of things like all my cameras and everything. Just-- I know it brings it up in the app, however, even though they're check marked-- I can even check mark all of them-- the cameras will not show up. So the F parking lot, back hallway, reception, B parking lot, testing camera pit, those cameras will not show up on the Amazon Alexa. But you do want to make sure-- if you're looking at having your automation sync into Alexa as well that way you can have Alexa actually control some of your smart scenes-- pre-configured smart scenes, that you want to make sure you have automation check, and you also want to make sure your security system is checked so that you can use Alexa to check the status of your system or arm and disarm your system. So I'm just going to leave everything checked. Like I said, the cameras aren't going to pull through, only the automation and security system will. I'll hit Connect for now and you will see after it's connected, it'll say Total Connect has been successfully linked. What to do next? And it will give you some examples of things you can do. So now that I have my Amazon Alexa account linked in with my Total Connect 2.0, you're going to see I have my Lyric system up here in a disarmed, ready to armed state. So now if I want-- I'm going to go ahead and grab my Alexa. Hey, Alexa-- I don't know-- ask Total Connect what is the status of my system? Your security system is currently set to disarm ready. See disarm, ready to arm. I can also say, hey, Alexa, ask Total Connect to arm my system away. OK, I am sending the arm away command to your security panel. Takes a little bit for the commands to go through because, remember, Alexa has to communicate to Total Connect then Total Connect has to send the command down to Lyric. As you saw, probably took about three seconds for the command to go through. [ALARM BEEPING] Now one thing that you can't do with Alexa is disarm. Why? Because if somebody breaks in, they say, hey, Alexa, disarm my system, that's going to be a security breach and it's just not something that Honeywell or Alexa allows at this time. So the only thing you could do is ask for the status. You can arm your system away or stay. I'm going to go ahead and disarm at the actual panel myself. [PANEL BEEPING] Disarmed, ready to arm. Right. And then another cool thing that you can do with Alexa-- if you have pre-configured Z-Wave scenes, you can actually tell Alexa to run a scene. You're going to want to know the name of your scene. So, for instance, there's some pre-configured ones that say vacation, bed time, away, or stay. You can actually tell Alexa to run those scenes. And depending on-- if you have Z-Wave devices linked into those scenes-- for instance, if I set-- if I pre-configured my bedtime scene to lock all my doors, turn off all the lights, turn the A/C down to 75, or whatever you guys want it to-- if you tell Alexa to run that scene, well, that's going to trigger all of those Z-Wave devices that are in that scene to enable, or disable-- whatever you guys have them pre-configured to. Now, again, just remember in order to use the Amazon Alexa with the Lyric, you do need to have a Total Connect 2.0 account. That is the only way you'll be able to link them together. If you guys want to find out more, feel free to send us an email to support@alarmgrid.com. If you found the video helpful, make sure you hit Like underneath, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and enable notifications so when we upload new content, you guys get notified. I'm Jorge and I'll see you guys next time.