Hey Hubitat Community!
I have three groups setup in hubitat, each group is three Cree Connected Zigbee bulbs, each group is in a different room all located less than 20 feet from the hubitat hub.
Group 1 is named "Bedroom Lamps", defined as Group Bulb Dimmer-2.1 using the hubitat groups app. The bulbs are dimmable white only bulbs but they show up in Alexa as a having color and color temp options. Ignoring those settings, I am able to control the bulb from the alexa app and with my voice, no issues.
Groups 2 and 3 are defined exactly the same as group 1, named "Dining" and "Living Room Lamp". They each have three of the same Cree bulbs in them. I can also see these two groups in the alexa app and control their ON/OFF/dimming.
For some reason when I try to control Groups 2 and 3 with my voice, my alexa tells me that "Living Room Lamp doesn't support that" or "Dining doesn't support that". This is true if I try to turn the groups ON, OFF, or dim them to any level.
Am I correct to setup groups using the hubitat groups app and then pass those groups alone to Alexa?
I am not passing any of the individual bulbs to Alexa, only the three groups mentioned above.
I am also sure that I don't have any naming conflicts in the alexa app.
Really sounds like a naming issue. For example if I ask my Echo what’s the temperature in the hallway, it says “hallway doesn’t support that”. This is because the light in the hallway is in a Hue group named Hallway. But if I ask “what's the temperature of the hallway motion sensor”, it tells me.
Sorry I don’t have any lighting examples. Solved those long ago. But as I can recall, the issue was always a device I that either had the group or particular device name also in its name, but it wasn’t a device that supported in/off or dim commands.
Once I renamed these devices or the group, problem was solved.
i've had similar issues with fan switches and alexa. it'll still turn it on/off or set it to the speed i request, but i'll get an error from alexa about it. it happened a while back in one of the updates
I ended up just passing all the individual lights to Alexa and grouping it on their end. I'm still having some naming issues but at least Alexa tells me that directly so I can avoid them. For example I think it has a problem with the word "Dining" for my dining area, I had to call it "dining room" in the alexa group.
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Interesting. Also one of the lights I recall having issues with. But I don’t use Alexa groups at all. Working OK for a long time now. Can’t remember what the conflict was. Door lock or something like that. Been a long time.
I have found when dealing with Alexa, it is best to use Alexa Routines when talking to Alexa. If you have a lot of devices in the Alexa app, the AI gets confused easily when looking for the device you asked for. When you make a routine, Alexa looks at the routine names first and matches them up that way. It seems that with routines Alexa hears better. If that makes sense.
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The only issue I have had with Alexa is with naming something like "kitchen lights" in Hubitat, and having to tell Alexa "turn off the kitchen lights lights".
