newbie question

[Window man]

Most likely I will order Echo tomorrow (hoping for a special deal on Prime day). Here is my question:

I like to enable Alexa to open and close my remote controlled gate. The gate has an input that accept a momentary closed switch to toggle between open and close.I need a recommendation for a momentary switch which is compatible with Echo! Available through Amazon preferred.

Will Echo trigger this event locally (in case internet is off) or need the command go through the cloud? One would think these switching capabilities should be independend of the Internet, otherwise there would be no light switching if the internet is of....
Thanks for enlighten me.

[jwlv]

The quickest thing I can come up with is by using an Arduino microcontroller with a Wemo switch.
Basically the Wemo switch will turn on & off the power to the Arduino. On the Wemo, you can set it to turn itself off after a certain amount of time. For this project, 1 minute auto-off would seem appropriate.
Then you'd write a simple program for the Arduino to close a switch when it first gets power. The program would open the switch 1 second later and then just sit idle. There are numerous pins available on the Arduino, just pick 2. 
A minute later, Wemo turns off the Arduino.

Echo will not work without an Internet connection, mainly because it won't understand what you say to it. Anything you say after the wake word "Alexa" is sent to be processed at Amazon. The result is sent back to your Echo. This is how Echo, GoogleNow, Siri, and Cortana get far better voice recognition accuracy than non-cloud based systems.

[markv]

Any solution would require both an Internet and WiFi connection. AFAIK, there aren't any Wink or Hue compatible momentary relay switches, so you'd need a custom solution.

My HA system uses Insteon devices and I've rigged a momentary switch for arming the security system remotely (over HTTPS) using a Raspberry Pi (Arduino would work too). I can issue voice commands with my Android phone to arm the system and control lights, but for now the Echo doesn't support the ISY Rest protocol (though there is a clever workaround I won't detail here...)

Since Amazon is making an SDK available, more solutions will be coming soon

[Window man]

JWLV    Thanks for your reply. The need of internet makes sence.....unfortunately I have a less then reliable connection. In regard to the switching, I was thinking about something like this :

http://www.amazon.com/Smartphone-Controlled-Switch-Lazybone-Bluetooth/dp/B00NIFXS1M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1436844734&sr=8-1&keywords=Bluetooth+switch

This item is triggert by a phone... would be nice if it is Echo compatible and should then work   for my application as I would need onky a short impulse (switch closed momentary).

Another possible application would be a door release (buzzing somebody in). In this case I would run 12v through the switch and set the time to 10 second to activate the electromagnetic door release....

There are quite some interesting application imaginable.