I've successfully added my first 2 devices, Leviton plug-in dimmers. I have the Alexa skill app installed and she can see and control both devices by name. Both are in a room "Living Room", but I can't find how to have Alexa control at the room level, e.g. "Alexa, Turn Living Room On". She only seems to see individual devices, not rooms
Welcome to the community!
The rooms setup in Hubitat are not exposed or exported as devices, which is what Alexa can control.
The easiest way to achieve what you are looking for is to create groups for the devices within the Alexa app. Depending on your usr case, you also may need/want to set the device type in the Alexa app as Light instead of Switch.
If you want to instead manage this within Hubitat, you will need to use another app such as Room Lighting or Groups and Scenes to create a group device that can be exposed to Alexa.
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The alexa integration doesn't support Hubitat rooms but you can create a group in the Alexa app called "living room" and put your various devices into it. Then if you say "Alexa turn living room on" she will. You can also put the Alexa device itself into the Alexa group "living room" and simply say "Alexa, turn on the lights." She will figure out the rest. Alternatively you can create a group or a scene on HE and make that visible to Alexa as a switch.
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Anybody else have issues with Alexa turning on outlets because she thinks they are lights. Example my fans had to be removed from Alexa rooms and put into a group called fans. she always turns them on/off with the lights.
THere is an additional benefit to using Alexa for rooms vs creating Groups in HE and tying it through to Alexa. When you assign an Echo to a room, that echo simplifies the verbal codes.
Instead of 'Alexa turn on the Living Room lights' - while in the room the echo is in, you can say 'Turn on the the lights' and only that room will turn on. This is a big benefit! We've about 10 echo devices here - including two offices. When the GF says 'turn on lights' just her office goes on, and the same in my office. No need to differentiate.
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You need to change the device type in the Alexa app. On the "Devices" tab, All Devices, choose your device. Click the gear icon to update the device settings. The "Type" option should be changeable. Change from light to switch.
Any device type of light, Alexa will treat special. If the Alexa device is set as the same room as the light, it will assume that light is the one you mean if it's ambiguous to other lights in the house. Also, it will trigger it with "turn on the lights" as you mentioned.
YES. No matter what I do. I gave up as well and just pulled the fan out of the Alexa group. I could call support but I dont have 4 hours to try and explain the problem to someone who has no idea what I'm talking about, and then never see it get fixed.
Have you ever actually gotten this to work? I know its supposed to work in theory but I have a ceiling fan in one room the device is set as a switch in Alexa, but turn on/off the lights and the fan is controlled also. Also had a TV in the room as well (paired to a FireTV cube), she would turn that on/off also when you specifically said "lights". I just gave up and made a separate group for the TV, and pulled the fan out of any groups.
No matter what it's on Alexa treats everything's ng as a light. It's amazing just how badly Amazon has done in the smart home.
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Well what do you know they may have fixed that finally... I switched one of my smart plugs to type plug and it did not come on with 'lights'. Changed it back to a light and then it comes on!
@jnosa899 I will have to mess with it some more later and see if it will work properly for my fan and TV as well now.
Maybe it is related to the echo device being used? I used to have a really old first Gen TV cube in the room with the fan and TV.
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The more annoying thing for me is that anything NOT a light won't ever have ambiguous device rules applied. Ie, if you place a fan in the room, and say "turn on the fan", it will not use that hint. It will simply turn on the first fan found. We're constantly turning on the bedroom fan accidently.
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The best is when my daughter used to say turn on my lamp Alexa kept turning on the light IN the oven. Took me weeks to figure out why that darn light was on every morning. I renamed the lamp in her room to be “my lamp” lol. She is the only one with a floor lamp so it works.
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I have a lamp in the family room. Every time I asked Alexa to turn on the "family room lamp" she'd turn on the family room TV & Fire stick. Had to rename the lamp to "table lamp". She's not very good at differentiating not so subtle differences in device names. Amazon's recent cutbacks in the Alexa department don't bode well for any improvements.
It might be a good idea to add Rooms to the Alexa app as virtual devices, to work around Alexa's shortcomings. Only issue I'd see there is how to define a room as On or Off, when multiple devices could be in different states.
