Multiple Alexas and my home

What I want to do:
Setup

  • Room 1, echo 1, Fan 1, Light 1
  • Room 2, echo 2, Fan 2, Light 2
  • ...
  • Room X, echo x, light x

Walk into room 1 and say, "Alexa, turn on a light", it turns on light 1, but no other lights
Walk into room 2 and say "Alexa, turn on the fan" and it turns on Fan 2, but no other fans

I want generic names, not living room light or bedroom fan.

I think I can do it through Alexa and Hubitat, using Alexa groups, but have been unsuccessful.
Any thoughts?

If you're able to achieve that granularity with a single Alexa account and no custom skill, that'll be impressive.

I just tested this and was able to do it.

I setup a group. In that group I put the echo in that room, a light and a fan. I did have to change the type of the light from a switch to a light. The fan was set as a switch by default.

I then told that echo to turn on the light and it did just that light. I told it to turn on/off the fan and it did that fan.

Everything else in that room I would control by saying something like turn on the "family room lamp" etc.

Is this what you are trying to do?

Note: Also, I did not have to change the names of my devices. I think alexa picked up the light by the type that was set. And picked up the fan by the word fan in the name.

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I can do one room, but it is going to my bedroom where I have another alexa puch and saying,"turn on the light", and having the bedroom alexa know it is attached to the bedroom light not the living room light.

And just to be clear, the group was set in the Alexa app, not Hubitat. Correct?

Correct. Its in the alexa app itself that I have to do this.

Technically you should be able to add the echo to that group and it would know what devices you are referring too.

I haven't tried that with multiple rooms though. I have multiple Alexa's, I may just give that a shot.

I knew it could be done with lights but picking up the fan is a pleasant surprise. :smile:

Please do, I cannot...

Well my fan is just a bathroom fan that is on a switch. I'm not sure if that makes a difference. But I was able to just say turn on the fan and it worked and the full name of the device was "Master bathroom fan". I think the presence of the word fan caused it to recognize that.

I know alexa does things based on the naming too. I just can't figure out what rules it follows.

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This is the type of functionality that is sadly missing. I always thought that Amazon missed a great functionality opportunity by not implementing this. You should be able to link certain devices to a specific Alexa, where you have the ability to give a 2nd name to a device during the linking process. So just like you say, your device (light/fan/whatever) has an identifying name within the hub/device's Official App, but when linking to Alexa, there should be an option to call the light something generic as well, so when the Alexa it is linked to hears the generic name, it activates it. Hey, they do a great job at figuring out which Alexa you are closest to when issuing a command, this would be a fantastic feature.

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You can change the name in the Alexa app, so I have 1 room where my light is called "Light", and my Fan is called "Fan". All the other lights and Fans have their room descriptor.
And yes, it would be a fantastic feature :slight_smile:

I was able to test.

I created a master bedroom group with a light and my fan (which is just a switch).
I created a family room group with a light.

When I walk into my family room I can say "turn on/off the light" and it works.
When I walk into my master bedroom I can say "turn on/off the fan" and it works. And if I say "turn on/off the light" it turns on both the light and the fan. Go figures it would stop working after I had it working and deleted it.

So for the most part it works. I bet it looks for all lights in the group to turn on and thinks my fan switch is a light too (even though the type is a switch). But this is good to know.

For my rooms though I create rules in rule machine and virtual devices. Mainly because I like to say "turn on/off the family room" but have different actions for each.

So if I say "turn on the family room" it will turn on the tv and the lamp. If I say turn off, it turns of everything (including the light and bar light).

In the US, Alexa devices have been able to do this for some time now (I don’t recall when they activated both of these features).

I can assign an Alexa device to a group with lights and switches. That allows me to say ā€œturn on the lights,ā€ and each Alexa device will turn on a different group of lights, depending on which Echo I’m talking to.

In the Alexa iOS app, I can rename devices too, and refer to those names with voice commands, instead of what they’re called in hubitat.

I forgot to mention this. My echo's are setup for the US (even though I'm in Canada) so it is possible that this could be just a US feature.

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Much better experience eh? Worth the small effort to setup a US account for Echo.

I no longer feel like I'm missing out. Even get to play around with show mode on the fire tablet. The Canadian specific features I lose I can live without.

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Well the lights work, but the Fan doesn't. When I turn off the light it turns off the fan... still a work in progress, but better...

I just tried this with my Canadian Amazon account and it works fine

Thanks

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