Which works out better if I am controlling Philips Hue devices in Hubitat and I also want to use Amazon Alexa for voice control? Should I:
Add the Philips Hue devices to Alexa via Hubitat?
or
Add Philips Hue devices to Hubitat and directly to Alexa separately, and exclude Philips Hue devices when adding devices to Alexa via the Alexa App?
(2) is what I am doing now, and already I can't help but note that it is annoying to have to constantly make sure I am excluding Philips Hue devices when adding devices via the Alexa App
However, I also use a lot of scenes in the Philips Hue App, so if I went with option 1, would I lose those scenes?
I have two HUE hubs and have done both, this way I can control devices on both hubs through Alexa, one directly to HUE and the second through the HE devices shared to Alexa Alexa only allows you to pair with one HUE hub so this gets around that restriction.
You should be able to simply turn on this setting in the Hubitat Hub's "Amazon Echo Skill" app and never have to worry about accidentally selecting Hue lights from Hubitat again.
Thanks, I do have it turned on, but when I add other devices and scroll through to check them, I'm afraid I'll accidentally select a Philips device by mistake... which would overrride the "exclude Hubitate Integrated Hue Devices" setting, would it not?
I actually tried to partially fix this problem by renaming all of the rooms in Philips Hue with the "-Philips" tag. However, I still don't those updated names in Hubitat portal. How can I update Hubitat with new Philips Hue names/settings? Do I need to disable and reenable the Philips Hue App? If I did that, would I lose all previous devices in my Hubitat dashboard?
I believe you can select all of your Hue bulbs in the Hubitat Amazon Echo Skill app, and as long as that feature to Exclude them is enabled, none of them will appear in Alexa. This assumes you are using Hubitat's Hue bridge integration, and not a community-based integration.
OK, that would help then. Is it true there won't be duplicates if I failed to exclude them? My experience with Wink is that duplicates were a major problem.
The little feature was added by Hubitat due to many of the Hubitat developers having the exact same problem on SmartThings, as you had on Wink. I think you'll be safe. Add one bulb, click DONE and see if anything 'new' shows up in Alexa. I am betting you'll be pleased.
Alexa only allows you to pair with one HUE hub so this gets around that restriction.
