Your Amazon Fire Stick Can Make Your Home Security System Even Better

The Amazon Fire TV Stick is a great peripheral that lets you stream a variety of content on your TV. The integration of the Silk Browser makes the Fire Stick more capable than many of its peers. But that’s not all! The Fire TV Stick can enhance your home security by displaying live home camera footage directly on your TV.

Like other Amazon devices, the Fire TV Stick comes preloaded with Alexa. Apart from handling simple voice commands to play a song or fetch weather updates, Alexa can connect to a wide range of smart devices, including cameras. Once paired, you can view the camera feed on any Amazon device with a display, such as the Echo Show and Fire TV Stick.

Integrating cameras with the Alexa app becomes a game-changer with custom routines. Routines are IFTTT (If This Then That)-type commands that enable you to automate tasks, such as turning the lights on or adjusting the thermostat settings at a specific time.

The Alexa app supports a range of smart home devices like smart bulbs, speakers, and cameras from multiple brands. To check if your camera supports Alexa integration, simply head to the “Skills and Games” section on the Alexa app and search for your camera model. If it appears in the search results, click on “Enable Skill” to pair the camera.

Ensure the camera is correctly configured and connected to the same network to pair with Alexa. Once linked, you can change the camera name to something more convenient, such as gate, backyard, or driveway. If the connected camera supports live view, you should be able to see the feed directly in the Alexa app. The Alexa app also enables two-way communication if the camera is equipped with speakers and microphones.

Once the setup is complete, you can say “Alexa, show backyard” using the Fire TV Stick remote to display the backyard camera feed on your TV. The same command can display the camera feed to other Amazon devices such as the Echo Show.

Viewing the camera feed on the go is important; however, it is not feasible to constantly monitor your cameras for surveillance purposes. For this, the best Wi-Fi security cameras come equipped with built-in motion and alarm detection, making them more convenient to use. Creating custom routines that utilize these smart camera features can take your home security to the next level.

Let’s say you have a gate camera that supports motion detection, and you want to view the camera feed whenever someone approaches the gate. You can set up a custom routine in the Alexa app that displays the gate camera feed to your Fire TV whenever the camera detects motion. You can also create a push notification routine that alerts you whenever the camera’s microphones detect an alarm. That way, you will know if there’s something wrong in the house even if you aren’t physically present inside.

Additionally, you can install third-party camera apps on the Fire TV to view multiple camera feeds at once. These apps also come in handy if your cameras don’t natively support Alexa. Some apps also let you pan, tilt, and zoom your camera’s image with PTZ-supported cameras.