Hey All,
I have multiple Echos in my house. What I want to do is have 1 routine phrase that runs a different routine in each room.
Example:
Child 1 goes to bed
Child 1 says, "Alexa, it's bed time"
Lights dim
Relaxing sleep ambient noises play
Child 2 goes to bed
Child 2 says, "Alexa, it's Bed time"
Lights Dim
Lullabies play from amazon music.
Is there anyway to do this?
Not like that, no
Why not try
âalexa itâs child1âs bedtimeâ
âAlexa itâs child2âs bedtimeâ
That way you create two routines in the alexa app but they should be different enough to work.
The alternative is to get the alexa routine to turn on a virtual switch and have HE react to that switch with different time restrictions etc
Andy
I had a similar issue with just simple phrases since it was an uphill battle trying to get the wife and kids to say: "Alexa turn on ____ room lights", they just wanted to walk into a room and say Alexa turn on lights or turn on fan. I ended up creating a couple separate Alexa accounts so I could define simple devices called "lights" and linked them all to the Hubitat skill. Works really well and no more room specific commands.
You can do this with Alexa with a single account now
Just define a room (group) in the alexa app and add the relevant lights and relevant alexa device to this 'room'
Then you can just say 'alexa turn on the lights' and it will know which room to go by because the alexa device is in that room (and was the one that heard the instruction)
Andy
Not familiar with Alexa but in Google if you put lights in rooms and name the rooms consistently with the speakers, you can say" turn off the lights" and it will just turn off the lights in that room. One potential problem is if you are loud (who? Me?), multiple speakers might hear you.
You are correct, it works with turn on/off lights, but it turns off all lights in the group. My issue was my wife wanted to be able to walk into a room and say - "Alexa turn on/off ceiling fan", so I had to define separate accounts. Because Alexa doesn't have a "fan" group and thinks it's a dimmer. So I had to name the device a "Fan", but this would conflict with all the other rooms that I need to name the device as a fan like master bedroom, spare bedroom, family room (we have a lot of ceiling fans). So creating separate accounts for each echo allowed me to create each name as "Fan" without any conflicts. Little bit of extra work, but it keeps everyone happy!
I'm allowed to automate, but I have to keep it ultra simple for everyone.
Understood. A good philosophy!
I do the same as @mboarman, however, you can have multiple accounts on a single device and switch between them with a command. To customize device names and routines, as @mboarman has said, it requires different accounts, unfortunately. I think Alexa needs dramatic improvements in multiple account support. I hate having to tell her to switch accounts, even though she can recognize who is speaking. I end up with my wife's reminders all the time.
Amazon does use feedback. So everyone should ask for "context awareness" for more than lights and speakers.
From the Alexa app go to "Help & Feedback" in the 3 line menu.
Or https://alexa.amazon.com/spa/index.html#feedback from a browser
I thought the household and voice training for each user fixed this?
Nope. You can even ask her, "What account is this?" to which she responds, "I think Doug is speaking, and this is [whomever's] account. She knows who's speaking, but for some reason goes ahead and stays in the currently selected account.
Maybe there's something I don't know, but that's the trouble I have.
Hey Everyone thanks for the suggestions. I think I am going to go the route of a virtual switch for each room and then use a rule and echo speaks to get the results I need.
Interestingly enough, If I put my daughters name in the routine, the routine wont run. Alexa responds with, "I am sorry, I can't do that".
I see what youâre saying, you want it to auto switch accounts based on who speaks. That would be really nice.
Doesnât fix the problem but, I do know that she will respond to âSwitch to my accountâ, you donât have to use a specific account name.
Will Alexa support this using room awareness?
Alexa, turn on the fan (using Bedroom Echo)
Bedroom Group
=> Bedroom Fan (Target)
Living Room Group
=> Living Room Fan
No, that only works with lights. It would be really nice to have the same functionality for fans and thermostats (for homes with multiple zoned HVAC).
Edit: I stand corrected, it does work with thermostats.
I can't believe Amazon has not fixed this issue. Room context is critical to "natural" langauge.
Not a perfect solution as it adds more moving parts, external device hosting Node-RED, which can be from as simple as an android device to a RPi to a home server, but it is rock solid from my experience and you get a lot of control.
The nodes mentioned in that post should work, they hinge on determining the room via the serial number of the echo device that got the wake word and request, but supposedly there is a new maintainer so you may want to check them out first.
For instance I use these to do room aware goodnight and good morning routines, lights on/off, motion sensors on/off, thermostats on/off, fans on/off, along with just more robust routine control in general. Those nodes are super powerful and if you need any examples just give me a holler or post in one of those threads.
Not defending their sluggishness as I agree with you, but to be devil's advocate, imo they are leagues ahead of the competition, Apple and Google and even IFTTT in most cases (especially with price now) , in terms of smart home integration and automation robustness that they can get away with it. That being said I agree with you and make sure to send them feedback so they know what we want.
How well does that work for you btw? The reason I went down the NR rabbit hole initially was because this feature was broken beyond belief and Amazon support was convinced that the feature didn't even exist. It routinely controlled both lights AND plugs in a given group even though the plugs were categorized as plugs and NOT lights.
BTW, credit where credit is due, this is the original thread I based my design on:
OH, there also is another way that is a lot more hacky and has a lot more latency but is self contained on the hub that involves Echo Speaks and the wasLastSpokenTo (I think that is what it is called?) attribute, but I would not recommend it.
Here is an example:
As @cjkeenan posts above, this is doable. But with extra hardware/software etc (but various ways to do that).
As the posts suggests, a lot are using Node Red for this kind of functionality, which does bridge the gap Amazon has left us with. And I'll reiterate its rock solid. Although Amazon have broken things a little lately, which this post can resolve.
I'm using the same phrases in each room with an Echo device to trigger what I want in that room.
One example flow.
I don't group anything in Alexa, and I keep as few devices in there as possible, most are executed in the manner above in Node Red, This was all thanks to @stephen_nutt and this thread
So is it doable, yes. But not without quite a lot of work, but once set up, its pretty awesome 
Here is the feedback with no movement from Amazon.
Download the Hubitat app
