From monitoring the weather to controlling your smart home, Amazon Echo has hundreds of different skills. One that piqued our interest here at Family Handyman is Alexa Guard, a home security feature built right into the speaker. Say “Alexa, I’m leaving” to your Amazon Echo and it will activate guard mode, listening for breaking glass and smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Upon detection, it will activate lights and integrate with select security systems, like ADT.
You can even have your Amazon Echo make guard dog sounds to deter intruders. These seemed like handy security features, but we really wanted to test them in homeLAB and see if they held up to scrutiny. Here’s what we found.
Breaking Glass Detection
Amazon Echo claims to be able to hear breaking glass. Presumably, if someone broke glass to enter your house, your Amazon Echo would hear it and send a notification to your phone. That sounds like a great feature, but does it really work?
In the homeLAB, we activated Amazon Echo’s guard mode and smashed small pieces of glass before shattering much larger pieces. We were roughly 3 ft. away from the Echo, and yet, no matter how much glass we broke, it didn’t detect anything. We tried to make the glass breaking sounds louder, but that didn’t work, either. Eventually, we put shards of glass in a bag and shook it rapidly. Still nothing. In fact, the only way we could get the Echo to recognize breaking glass was to play glass-breaking sound effects on a smartphone.
Smoke or Carbon Monoxide Alarm Detection
Amazon Echo can send a notification to your phone if it hears smoke or carbon monoxide alarms. We first tested a smoke alarm about a foot away from the Echo. Within roughly five seconds, it detected the sound and sent a notification and included a sound clip in the Alexa app. We did several tests, each time moving roughly 10 ft. away from Echo to see how far it could hear the alarm. The Echo passed every test, hearing the slightest chirp from 65 ft. away and immediately sending a notification to my tablet. This is an awesome feature!
