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Time of day usage triggering routine?

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Time of day usage triggering routine?
« on: November 05, 2021, 02:51:16 pm »
My 88yo MIL is having issues with confusing time of day.  She's on track for neurological evaluation, so I'm not asking about that.

A typical example of the problem is for a 1pm appointment the following day she'll get herself up at midnight the day before, get ready and walk down to the building lobby, and then sit there waiting.  Or worse, calling the front desk complaining (in a rant-like manner).  It's an assisted-living facility, so there's no big risks involved here.  She's not otherwise an elopement risk, it's just annoying having her constantly get the time of day skewed.

We've gotten her a range of other devices to try and mitigate the confusion (like LCD clocks that say NIGHT).  To little avail.  The fact that it's PITCH BLACK OUTSIDE, likewise escapes her.  It's no fun getting old, and even less fun trying to manage it while we live several states away. 

She's got three different Alexa devices.  It'd be fantastic if I could set up a routine that catches use of them during an "off hours" window of time and possibly triggers something else.  As in, "Alexa, what time is it" and following up the time announcement with "It's the middle of the night, please go back to sleep". 

Almost like a burglar alarm, but without the sirens or remote notification.  WE don't also need to be awoken in the middle of the night.  Heh, I suppose it'd almost like being a polite burglar alarm.. "I see you're skulking around in the middle of the night, could you please leave?"

There's nothing else on-site at the moment to assist with this but I'd certainly be willing to add a PC or whatever if a hub of sorts was needed for the added logic.  I have full access to the account.  I could set something up here if using just the cloud could work.

Any thoughts on what it'd take to lash up something to make this work?

Offline jwlv

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Re: Time of day usage triggering routine?
« Reply #1 on: November 06, 2021, 09:56:36 am »
I can think of one way to accomplish what you described.

First you'll need to buy a Ring alarm system. It should come with 1 or 2 motion sensors, depending on the kit you buy. Once you have the Ring alarm set up, you can create an Alexa routine that would be triggered by the Ring motion sensor. Then you can have Alexa say something, such as "It's 2 in the morning. You should go back to bed."

Although there are other devices and motion sensors available out there, I only suggest Ring alarm because I know that the Ring motion sensor can be used as a trigger for Alexa routines. Other motion sensors might not work as an Alexa trigger. I actually use a Ring motion sensor in my backyard so that when it detects motion, my Alexa says "Motion detected in the back yard." The Ring alarm kit also comes with door & window sensors. You could add another Alexa routine that's triggered by the door sensor. If someone opens the door between 12am - 5am, Alexa could play a sound and say something. The Ring alarm system is a security system. You don't ever need to arm it if you don't want to. There's no monthly fee unless you want to pay for live monitoring. For the purposes described above, you can use it only for the motion or door sensors.