Two Locations, Two Hubitats, Alexa

I have a main home and a cabin. Both have a Hubitat hub which I love. However, I can only connect to one Hubitat with my Alexa account.

When setting up the Alexa skill I can only select one of my hubs, which means I can’t use both hubs.

Alexa doesn’t work well with two accounts. Two Hubitat a don’t work with one Alexa accounts.

What am I to do? Has anyone else solved this?

The short answer is probably not..

The longer more involved answer is there are potential workarounds.. each with their own issues etc.

  1. Sharing your devices from your remote site to your main site using an older but awesome community app called Hub Connect.

The issue here is you'd need to have a mostly persistent link between your remote and main sites - like with a VPN. Also you'd have to name your devices specifically to distinguish one site for another.. Alexa turn on "Cabin Lights" vs "Home Lights" etc.

  1. Incorporate a companion server like a Raspberry PI and run Node-RED on it. This will allow you to install a node called node-red-contrib-alexa-remote2-applestrudel.

This does not require a "skill" and will allow you to control devices through custom routines. Not as nice as direct sharing of devices like you can do with HE Alexa Skill. The cool bit is the commands can be the same at both the remote site and the local site.

  1. "HomeAssistant" companion server - a very flexible/powerful home automation system in it's own right but can be bridged to HE and use the HE's devices. Drawback for HA is it can get complicated and requires some technical skill.. I have not implemented any of these potential solutions so cannot say if they would work for you or not. Also this article is old so not sure if all these are still working - the subscription one probably is but not a fan of that.
  1. HomeBridge companion server with HomeBridge Alexa. This requires a paid subscription to a company/individuals I am not familiar with so can't recommend at the moment (plus I hate cloud subscriptions!).

  2. There might also be a way to share devices via MQTT but that involves more fun technical things..

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Thank you for all the options! I will try the options you suggest.

Does anyone else see this as a major oversight? I was hoping I could use Hubitat and Alexa at two locations but it seems like this is a painful situation. Maybe it's just easier to scrap the Hubitat at my Cabin and use a different hub! I like pushing the easy button!

There is a request section here you can post to make the request. It would be nice if the HubMesh system could handle this BUT I suspect that feature might also be a good thing to add to their paid subscription services.. :man_shrugging:

Why not just create a different account for the far alexa? This way you can use hub connect to bring everything together and be able to use alexa at both places. Setting up a second account is fairly easy. for instance, cabinatthisaddress@gmail.com for there...

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I thought of that, but you do lose a few things:

  • Being able to drop-in on the remote Alexa
  • Being able to remotely control cabin devices
  • Notification of deliveries at home
  • Music sharing

I may give it a try to see what I miss

Isn't that what hub connect would be used for?

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Also you could easily set some virtual switches for alexa triggers as well...

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Not to go off on a tangent but this also brings up another interesting thing.. having your Hubitat hubs registered to separate emails as well (by property/address name). That way if you ever sell any of the properties you can just turn over everything.. credit to @672southmain for the idea..

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This doesn't solve anything but I do have a question. Are there any Alexa skills for any hubs that allow multiple instances (locations)? Admittedly I haven't put a ton of things in Alexa, nor have I used other hubs, but it seems like anything I have tried have only allowed one install of an app.

So is this a Hubitat feature request, or an Alexa/Amazon feature request?

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In Node-RED I've been able to use same Alexa account with different NR instances BUT the NR Alexa node does not use any skills so it's likely an HE/Skills thing but dunno. The drawback with the NR approach as I mentioned is Alexa does not manage your devices directly (def a good/bad thing!) instead requiring the use of custom phrases. The nice thing there is you can tailor your phrases to specific Amazon Echos if you want - so saying something like "Alexa, shades up" could work differently depending upon which room / echo device you were speaking to.

Not sure how HA does it with their subscription service - if it is in fact allowed at all. The other HA way is/was to simulate a Hue Hub which seems cool if it still works but you are limited to simulating devices that the Hue supports, mostly lighting.

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