Hey all, I have another thread going trying to work out Amazon Alexa account integration for 2 locations with a single ST account. Sadly I learned, it won’t easily do what I want it to do.
So here’s a different question.
I learned we need to make a second ST account at our 2nd location in order to use the 2nd Alexa account. Currently we have a 2nd Alexa account for each location and a hub, on the same ST account, at each location. We can only get Alexa to work in one location or the other.
Is it possible to use the same iPhone as a presence sensor on 2 different ST systems without logging in and out of the respective ST accounts?
You should be able to invite an account to participate in a location.
Im unsure what you’ll have to to to allow presence access at location two @jkp? I’m not an iPhone person
But as far as ‘adding’ the account you just invite the email address of the foreign user and then accept the invite. You should then be able to access both locations in your app.
That’s what I thought but I’m certainly not super adept on this technology. It wasn’t seeming like it was possible from another post I made so before I started from scratch at location 2 I thought I’d ask. Worst case scenario, I can move it back.
Just trying to avoid having to log in and out of accounts just to get stuff to work.
I guess another solution is to keep the 2nd location as is, part of my main ST account and rather than use Alexa in location 2, we could do google nest there possibly.
Can you use 2 different voice assistant systems on the same ST account?
Yes, you can use Google Home (Assistant) and Alexa with the same ST account.
But like Alexa, Google links at the account level, so it will drag both locations in Google Home. The only difference is that in Google Home you can separate the devices by locations.
The problem is that the other account he wants to invite is not for a person, but rather an account that is used at another location to allow his second Alexa account/device to be associated with that location that is part of his primary account. So, he would not be able to login to both ST accounts on one phone to have it do location tracking for both accounts.
Because of the account level linking of Alexa to ST, you must have unique accounts for each Alexa account you want to link. So doing ST location tracking for two accounts for one person going from one location to another is simply not going to work. I suggested switching to Alexa location tracking to get around this limitation in the other topic he posted in. And JD suggested using some physical device or physical tracker as well.
Just to be clear, when I was talking about using additional SmartThings accounts I was suggesting creating separate new ST accounts that were only members of one Location each and whose only purpose was for providing the link to one Alexa account each.
I don’t know about iPhone, but I did used to have two profiles on an Android phone just so I could have ST account A on Location A, and ST account B on Location B. Somehow SmartThings ended up creating two presence sensors for each account. So I stopped doing that.
I have to admit, I’m not quite sure what you’re saying here.
For us, and our friend we share the vacation home with, we all use Alexa in our everyday homes. Neither of us have google nest.
Here’s where I’m cloudy on your response, please forgive me this is far more involved than I ever expected.
If we keep Alexa on my everyday house and then do google at the vacation house but with the same ST account, with a hub at each location, would we be able to use google for voice control of the vacation home devices and Alexa to control our daily home devices when we’re home?
Right now we have to link the Alexa skill to whosoever location we desire when we’re at one location or the other.
Sorry if I’m not understanding, like I said, this is beyond my scope of knowledge currently
I’m definitely not arguing if this is right or wrong, I’m simply curious why a single phone can’t be used as a presence sensor for 2 separate ST accounts without being logged in.
If the phone is set to use this device for my location and it’s set to “always” for location services, what keeps it from working?
If you hook up Google to your ST account it will connect to all compatible devices at both your Home and Vacation Place. This is no different than Alexa. The old difference is that in Google you can sort the devices by location.
Hook it up and try it out. It is free, you don’t need a physical device to see how it works. You can always delete it.
I’m getting tied in a knot by elements of this thread (not being an active Alexa user doesn’t help) but … The way SmartThings mobile presence works is that the SmartThings app creates geofences using the location services in the phone/tablet host OS. The location services notify the SmartThings app of entry or exit to a geofence and the app communicates that to the SmartThings backend. The SmartThings app is only logged into a single SmartThings/Samsung account at once so can only update the presence for that account. So multiple Locations and Linked places can be updated, but only for that one account.
Who would’ve thought this was such a difficult task.
I feel like there should be a fairly simple way of accomplishing this but it’s not appearing that way.
The easy solution is to simply use my home Alexa account at the vacation house but we always run the risk of inadvertently controlling the wrong thing even with good naming.
All I’m looking to do is be able to have the two locations, run automations that are triggered off of the iPhone being the presence sensor and be able to use Alexa for voice commands for day to day control.
I understand how you got here, but you’re talking about two separate issues.
One, being able to isolate the devices for a single location to Alexa. You’ve discovered that this will require that each location have its own Alexa account and it’s own SmartThings account.
Two, being able to use the same iPhone as a presence sensor for two different smartthings accounts. So that people arriving at your vacation home don’t have to do anything special in order to let that smartthings account and that Alexa account know that they’ve arrived.
And you don’t want to do anything complicated. (Also, I probably just missed it, but I’m not clear on whether the vacation home also has a hub or not.)
Anyway, I do know how to do this in a fairly straightforward manner that won’t require anything too complicated. But it will require that you have HomeKit set up at the vacation home. And that you have either an Apple TV four or a HomePod mini ($99) at that location. And since there are four people involved, that you buy a four socket Meross Wi-Fi power strip for the vacation home. The Meross is going to act as your proxy presence sensor.
If you meet those conditions, it’s gonna be pretty easy to set up and everybody can just carry their regular iPhone, and it will track their presence in both locations. And it will probably be cheaper than buying four key fob devices.
For your main home, you just do what you are doing now. Use the smartthings official presence to check in to the main home’s smartthings.
For your vacation home, set up HomeKit using the HomePod mini and add the Meross power strip to it.
Now create 4 HomeKit automations, one for each person, which just says when that person arrives, turn on their socket on the power strip. And four more HomeKit automations to turn their socket off when they leave the vacation home.
Connect your Meross account to your vacation home smartthings account through linked services. Now, smartthings at your vacation home can see the Meross power strip.
When the Meross power strip socket for person one is turned on, that person is at the vacation home, so you can use that in your smartthings automations as a presence proxy. You do not need to have a smartthings hub to make this work. You do not need any virtual devices.
So that’s it. You do have to buy the two new devices if you don’t already have them: the HomePod mini and MeRoss power strip.
And you do need to create the HomeKit automations, but they’re very simple.
And then you will have a Presence proxy indicator at the vacation home that will not confuse either smartthings or Alexa at the main home. And nobody has to carry anything extra.
BTW, the Meross power strip also has USB ports and you can use those as a phone charger whether anyone is home or not. They will not be turned off when the other sockets are turned off.
JD, this is GENIUS! I thought about apple HomeKit but then read it doesn’t easily integrate with ST so I abandoned it.
I love this idea, that’s lol I need it to do, allow us to use the separate Alexa account.
We do have a hub at each location, both are Aeotec.
So I’d take the hub, from the vacation house, off of the home account and then add it in for the new vacation home account. Add devices back in and the ST accounts will be separate just like the Alexa accounts are separate.
I’m assuming this will stop the cross pollinating of my home devices into the vacation home Alexa account as well?
Since the HomeKit doesn’t need to be linked to ST, it’s just going to be used as a geofence proximity beacon?
Pardons even more ignorance, but is HomeKit just the app? We have appletv 4K at our home, I could take one to the vacation home if necessary.
Then add in the power stop as you suggested and set up those simple HomeKit routines and now all should work, as normal, with my ST routines and scenes?
Since the HomeKit doesn’t need to be linked to ST, it’s just going to be used as a geofence proximity beacon?
Yes, for now. If you find other uses for it later, you can do that. And devices which use matter will eventually be able to be added to both smartthings and Apple home, but we aren’t quite there yet.