I just wanted to throw this out there because I've been very happy with our setup. My husband allowed me to get into home automation a few years ago on the understanding that he wouldn't ask, dance or sing to get a light to turn on or for something to happen in general. A light switch would be easier. So, I've stuck to that creedo to the letter. I CAN ask Alexa to do things, but usually it's been only for the garage door to open or the weather. It's kind've cool because my alexa upstairs is in a classic radio, so it's a point of interest. I spent a lot of time watching our habits and based rules on motion and harmony, time of day, who is home, etc. Now, we have a house that just knows what we're doing. Sure, there's some things that don't work quite right and give me an excuse to tinker, but you can bet my husband isn't going to have to touch a light switch or ask Alexa to do something for him. That's my story. I think that's why Alexa hates me. She's feeling a bit useless in the Brandt residence. Your use case works for you, but just thought I'd throw it out there in case you're open to suggestion.
Yeah, I totally see that and agree 100%. I am effectively using Alexa right now as a crutch to make up for a lack of hardware like buttons or contact sensors. I could put a button in each room or contacts sensors on certain doors I guess but currently I don't have that hardware so I use Alexa as basically a catchall for administrative tasks, lights, fans that are smart, and motion sensing disabling/enabling.
I am just trying to optimize what I have and really don't understand what is going wrong since this feature is from Amazon and not anything custom I did.
Definitely get that. One thing at a time, right? I use a lot of motion sensors in rooms. Contact sensors on external doors and pantry and closet doors.
This one looks like it might be something that will work for you?
node-red-contrib-alexa-home-skill
I see that it can trigger like a routine, but I don't see any way to have location sensitive actions, like if the commands come from a specific echo turn those lights on.
Like you said earlier I really don't find having to remember an alphabet soup of keywords in order to just use the house acceptable, so I really want to make any command as device, and by extension room, agnostic as possible.
I am starting to think that this is an issue with the Hubitat Skill for Alexa since I have not experienced this issue before switching to Hubitat when my smart home was purely Alexa with various cloud skills. For example, I had the exact same setup with Hue bulbs and Kasa plug directly into Alexa skills, and never ran into these issues with the "switches" turning on when I ask her to turn on the lights.
Currently in a chat with Alexa support so we will see how that turns out.
Post Chat (2-hours later 
): For anyone interested, send me a DM for the transcript. Basically, they do not feel that it is an issue and that it is working as intended and that if there is any issue, it is on the side of the Skill Developer, i.e. Hubitat, which I am calling B.S. on, but I digress. Since my brother who is not using Hubitat and only cloud skills has the same issue, they did say that they are passing this onto the technicians/developers to see what can be done given that they have reports of two people not having it work for them. If anyone else has this issue I would highly recommend letting Amazon know.
Hmm ... there must be a way around this. I know that I can specify which alexa does what within node red. there has to be a way to engineer this. I probably won't get much time to play around with it this week, but I'll let you know if I do find out something.
@april.brandt So I asked over on the Node-RED thread here on the forums and they directed me to the post below. First impressions are good and I have two of my use cases transferred over. Just trying to work out the kinks of Alexa not finding what I am talking about or recommending random skills.
My flow to replace the built in " ... turn on/off lights" command which I like to call, "Now this is Podracing" :
Recommended Thread:
There are two people that come to mind that may be able to help here. @JasonJoel and @csteele. But can you paste your flow code here also?
This is where i believe the alexa local nodes solve this. They create a virtual device inside alexa app
I'll have to defer to one of the others on this one, as while I know node-red very well - I don't use Alexa at all.
Me too. I'm in April's camp.
I have Hubitat's Amazon Echo Skill installed but it gets used once a month or less. As a result, I've never had interest in adding it to Node-Red.
Here is the flow code for the picture I posted, one thing to note is you may have to change the wake word you strip out, which in my experience is altogether unnecessary since out of the device activity output message, specifically the summary, which contains what was said, does not contain the wake word, but that is what the guide said so whatever. Also, the configuration nodes will have to be switched to yours obviously:
[{"id":"68ba5945.906288","type":"tab","label":"Generic Light Control","disabled":false,"info":"Turns lights on and off per the room you are in."},{"id":"80bb010d.082ce","type":"switch","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"Phrase Handler","property":"payload.description.summary","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"regex","v":"turn off ( the)?lights","vt":"str","case":false},{"t":"regex","v":"turn on ( the)?lights","vt":"str","case":false}],"checkall":"false","repair":false,"outputs":2,"x":520,"y":320,"wires":[["af996470.7bf118"],["e0acbb82.c84ac8"]],"outputLabels":["Turn on",""]},{"id":"1737ebff.565734","type":"hubitat command","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"GR - Lights Off","server":"b130c189.ea4d2","deviceId":"67","command":"off","commandArgs":"","x":720,"y":120,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"af996470.7bf118","type":"switch","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"Device Handler","property":"payload.deviceSerialNumber","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"eq","v":"G090U509912423CC","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"G6G0XG100134018V","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"G090U5099117264T","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"G090U509911620T7","vt":"str"}],"checkall":"false","repair":false,"outputs":4,"x":520,"y":180,"wires":[["1737ebff.565734"],["6f6ae5ea.792f9c"],["c73b5d38.e4ed6"],["83b32c58.41ce"]],"outputLabels":["Great Room","Downstairs Bedroom","Kitchen","Master Bedroom"],"info":"Great Room - G090U509912423CC\nDownstairs Bedroom - G6G0XG100134018V\nKitchen - G090U5099117264T\nMaster Bedroom - G090U509911620T7"},{"id":"3407811a.1e9e4e","type":"change","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"Summary Handler","rules":[{"t":"change","p":"payload.description.summary","pt":"msg","from":"^(echo )?","fromt":"re","to":"","tot":"str"}],"action":"","property":"","from":"","to":"","reg":false,"x":330,"y":320,"wires":[["80bb010d.082ce"]],"info":"Strips the wake word from the summary (May not be needed anymore)"},{"id":"6f6ae5ea.792f9c","type":"hubitat command","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"DB - Lights Off","server":"b130c189.ea4d2","deviceId":"69","command":"off","commandArgs":"","x":720,"y":160,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"c73b5d38.e4ed6","type":"hubitat command","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"K - Lights Off","server":"b130c189.ea4d2","deviceId":"68","command":"off","commandArgs":"","x":710,"y":200,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"83b32c58.41ce","type":"hubitat command","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"MB - Lights Off","server":"b130c189.ea4d2","deviceId":"501","command":"off","commandArgs":"","x":720,"y":240,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"666629d2.9fdf18","type":"hubitat command","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"DB - Lights On","server":"b130c189.ea4d2","deviceId":"69","command":"on","commandArgs":"","x":720,"y":440,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"a4468c2.dde517","type":"hubitat command","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"K - Lights On","server":"b130c189.ea4d2","deviceId":"68","command":"on","commandArgs":"","x":710,"y":480,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"5b9d4c70.22d984","type":"hubitat command","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"MB - Lights On","server":"b130c189.ea4d2","deviceId":"501","command":"on","commandArgs":"","x":720,"y":520,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"f5561f49.28d01","type":"alexa-remote-event","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"","account":"4553eef5.ffc05","event":"ws-device-activity","x":130,"y":320,"wires":[["3407811a.1e9e4e"]]},{"id":"cd66091.af90cf8","type":"hubitat command","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"GR - Lights On","server":"b130c189.ea4d2","deviceId":"67","command":"on","commandArgs":"","x":720,"y":400,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"e0acbb82.c84ac8","type":"switch","z":"68ba5945.906288","name":"Device Handler","property":"payload.deviceSerialNumber","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"eq","v":"G090U509912423CC","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"G6G0XG100134018V","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"G090U5099117264T","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"G090U509911620T7","vt":"str"}],"checkall":"false","repair":false,"outputs":4,"x":520,"y":460,"wires":[["cd66091.af90cf8"],["666629d2.9fdf18"],["a4468c2.dde517"],["5b9d4c70.22d984"]],"outputLabels":["Great Room","Downstairs Bedroom","Kitchen","Master Bedroom"],"info":"Great Room - G090U509912423CC\nDownstairs Bedroom - G6G0XG100134018V\nKitchen - G090U5099117264T\nMaster Bedroom - G090U509911620T7"},{"id":"b130c189.ea4d2","type":"hubitat config","z":"","name":"Beach House Hubitat Config","usetls":false,"host":"192.168.2.240","port":"80","appId":"801","nodeRedServer":"http://192.168.2.253:1880","webhookPath":"/hubitat/webhook","autoRefresh":true,"useWebsocket":false},{"id":"4553eef5.ffc05","type":"alexa-remote-account","z":"","name":"","authMethod":"proxy","proxyOwnIp":"192.168.2.253","proxyPort":"3456","cookieFile":"authFile","refreshInterval":"3","alexaServiceHost":"pitangui.amazon.com","amazonPage":"amazon.com","acceptLanguage":"en-US","userAgent":"","useWsMqtt":"on","autoInit":"on"}]
Yeah what I ended up doing was a combination of making virtual devices in Hubitat that I expose that literally do nothing but provide an endpoint for an Alexa command, along with a few routines for commands that are not turn on/off or for commands that are not playing nice. For instance, I made two routines, turn on the lights, and turn off the lights that serve as an override to the normal, unreliable function, that that command serves and all is peachy, at least for now.
On another note, and not to derail this thread too much, what are your thoughts on bringing my motion lighting rules from the built-in app to NR. Most of the endpoints for those rules are Kasa Switches and I was wondering if it's better to expose those with the Hubitat integration or to use the NR integration directly.
I would say that if motion lighting app is working for you, no need to change. Unless of course you just want all your logic in NR
Really up to you..
Thats the beauty of HE and its integrations!
Yes, it is all working for me perfectly except for the hub slowdowns (example shown in picture below) I began experiencing once I added motion sensors. I am thinking it's an issue with my Kasa switches and the HE integration rather than my code but who knows.
I have been thinking of axing all my Kasa plugs in favor of Inovelli's, thoughts?
I dont use either sorry, so unfortunately not much help in this regard sorry
I had 10 Kasa devices on my HE last year and noticed a big improvement at that time when I replaced all but 3 of them with zigbee devices. I would see slowdowns if someone turned off any Kasa lights manually. I think Dave is working on improvements to the drivers to help mitigate this, but haven't followed it very closely.
Has anyone here noticed while using remote2, that every once in a while, I have not determined a pattern yet, that the Alexa devices, controlling echo dot volumes in my case, just error out like the screenshot below with the 'no body' debug message? Sorry I didn't get a screenshot of the error on the node I fixed it before documenting. A simple restart of flows got it working again but I rather not have that manual intervention.
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