create a Jarvis style welcome home greetings

[heyRon]

Maybe I’m watching too many superhero movies, idk.
I want my house to greet me by name the second I walk in. Ideally, it would say Welcome home, Ron! Then give me a quick briefing (like how many new emails I have), play a short intro tune, and pop the lights on.
I’m thinking about buying a SmartThings or Vera hub, an Amazon Echo, and some proximity sensors to detect my phone
Is this the best way to build? Are there better sensors or a specific app that makes the email update part easier to script?

 

[Alan]

Totally doable, and it’s a fun project. I’d skip Vera and lean Home Assistant or Hubitat if you want more flexible “Jarvis” logic. For arrival, phone geofence is okay but Bluetooth or a presence sensor is usually more reliable. For the email count, most people handle that via a service integration (not the hub itself) and then have the Echo speak it.

 

[DmitriiBlinov]

SmartThings plus Echo can work, but I’d pick the hub based on how much you care about routines still working when the cloud is having a day. The email count part usually needs a cloud integration anyway. Are you okay with it pulling from one Gmail inbox, or do you need something more specific.

 

[CherryL3mon]

Home Assistant is the only way to do this. SmartThings and Echo are great, but they struggle with personalized variables like your specific name and dynamic data like email counts

Use the IMAP integration in Home Assistant to watch your inbox. when your mmWave presence sensor sees you walk through the door, it can trigger a TTS command to your Alexa or Google Home