How to use the Amazon Echo Show with a Ring Doorbell

Now that you have your Ring Doorbell connected to your Amazon Echo Show, you can immediately begin monitoring your home. There are a few cool things you can do once it’s all set up.

How to “answer” the door

When someone rings your Ring Doorbell, or it detects movement, you’ll get an audible and visual notification on all your Amazon Echo Show devices. You can specify specific devices if you wish. Alexa will announce that someone is at your door, using the label you set up for that particular Ring Doorbell. This lets you know which exact door your visitor is at.

Note that you can customize the labels for each of your Ring Doorbells so that you can distinguish between different areas of your home. For example, if you want one for your back door, you can label it “back door.” Just say the name of that label whenever you want to interact with that particular doorbell.

To answer the door, you can say “Alexa, answer front door” or “Alexa, talk to front door” to access the video feed and open up a two-way line of voice communication with the visitor. Note that in the case of using multiple Amazon Echo Show devices, only one of them will be able to communicate with your Ring Doorbell at a time.

Of course, answering the door with a Ring Doorbell alone won’t let the visitor into your house. You’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way and walk to the door — unless you have a smart lock. Also, there’s no way to mute your microphone after you’ve answered the doorbell until you’ve completely shut down the video feed. So make sure you end the feed when you’re doing talking to your visitor by saying, “Alexa, stop.”

Are you worried about using voice at all? Thankfully, there’s a way to view who’s at your door without enabling your microphone.

How to check your live video feed at any time

Sometimes, you don’t want to answer the door, but you still want to know who’s there. If that’s the case, you can say the command, “Alexa, show my front door” or “Alexa, show the front door camera” to get a live video without enabling your microphone. To end the feed, say “Alexa, stop,” “Alexa, hide my front door,” or “Alexa, hide the front door camera.”

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Additional Equipment

To set up this smart security system, you’ll need a smartphone handy, so you can download the Alexa app to set the Ring skill up. There are also several other Ring products that work with Alexa that you might want to add. The Ring Pathlight, Ring Steplight, and Ring Floodlight Camera are all excellent options.