This is interesting. I didn’t experiment with having my parents uninstall/unlink their Amazon account from their SmartThings account to see if it fixed the issue for me. Based on @Jefferson_Myers experience (as I understand, he only had the Alexa SmartApp installed on one of his locations) I would not have expected simply removing the SmartApp from one of the hubs to affect things.
The surprising thing to me is that when you link the two, ST specifically asks you what location you want to grant Alexa access to. Seems like this is a definitive step to allowing and not allowing Alexa to control a specific location. I’m guessing that the other hub has a legacy permission to give Alexa access to those devices, but it’s very misleading at best.
My exp is that whichever was the most recently added hub to you smartthings app, will always be the one Alexa sees. No matter what. Only way I’ve fixed problem was to delete my access on smartthings to my parents account. Then rediscover with Alexa.
A SmartThings engineer has now responded in another thread:
So clearly you were right that something has changed, that the change has nothing to do with askAlexa unless somehow it switched the priority on your two different locations, and that it seems to be somewhat unpredictable as to what the effect will of this change will actually be on an individual account.
I’m having the same issue. Alexa is adding things from my parent’s location instead of my hub. I spent about an hour on the phone with Alexa support troubleshooting things. My other smart devices weren’t working either. Once removing everything and discovering again they all worked. Adding the skills back one by one were fine except for Smartthings which is choosing the wrong location even after selecting the correct one.
I was able to find some of the linkage between Alexa and Smartthings on the smartthings developer page api. It is stating that it is connected to my location.
“SmartApp Version Amazon Alexa
State COMPLETE
Health HEALTHY
Development App False”
So not sure what to do from here.
your alexa may not, but your primary ST account is connected. when you shared your ST account with your parents, either by giving them your login credentials or inviting them to use your ST account so they can use their own email, when enabling the ST skill from their alexa mobile app, they are in fact installing another instance of the alexa smartapp to the primary account. as was already mentioned, ST does not support multiple instances of alexa.
hi michael, at this time the alexa integration does not support multiple locations. even if you and your parents are using unique alexa accounts, you are still linking to one primary ST account. we’re looking into cause and will explore options. thank you very much for posting.
I had the same issue. My problem was both hubs were associated to my ST account. One should have been associated to my G-friend’s and one to mine. Her’s was associated to her account and mine. Had to call support to get them straight. I opted to have all removed and I rebuilt both networks. Somewhat of a pain, but in the end worth it. I learned a couple of things which made things easier.
- An account for each location is preferable if you want to keep Alexa happy.
- Don’t try to add a new location in home menu to gain access to other networks. Manage users in my account does the same thing and ST does not get confused.
- Use the smart phone of the primary person who will be at a location to set up ST hub. The hub will grab the info for the phone and name it to be the name on the account. In my case it took the name of my GF only it was my phone it tracked. ST hub can only track one phone. If the person is not there when you set up the hub, go into things and delete it when you can get that individual’s phone in proximity and add it then.
- Be cognizant of who is logged into ST and Alexa when you try to discover devices on Alexa. They need to be in synch. If you are straightening out your architecture, disable the skill in Alexa and then re-enable it to ensure it is talking to the right hub.
- You may have to manually open a few ports on your wireless router to ensure firmware updates get through. I had a problem at her house and her comcast equipment. Cox at my place worked fine. If you don’t know how to open individual ports, go into your router and set the security setting to as low as it will go and power cycle your hub to let the updates take place. Not an optimal workaround, but effective. Make sure you put it back when you’re done.
- If/when you call support,I suggest you ask for Mathew. Tell him you’re having similar problems as Rick did with Maura Manor.
Good luck.
Is there any hope of this ever being fixed?
It is severely limiting to be limited to using both at only 1 location, and to force a 1 location per account model for SmartThings. Clearly the API and integration was intended to support multiple SmartThings locations, since the Amazon Alexa SmartThings skill (still) gives you a choice of locations to integrate…
PLEASE?
There is a pretty easy work around that I used. Just create a brand new smart things user then add it to just one location. If you have two locations with Alexa you will need two smart thing users and add them each only to their one account. You can then give Alexa in each location the corresponding smart things user. I did this and completely solved them problem.
It is not so easy when each of my locations has more than 75 “things”, 2 dozen automations, and a suite of shared/common apps and automations across all 3. Made even more complex by the added difficulty of switching between locations in the mobile app, and trying to keep 3 separate IDE accounts consistent.
But thanks…
Yeah. It is that easy. Keep your existing account that can see everything. That is what you will use for your phone. You will create 3 new accounts one for each location and add them as secondary accounts, one for each location. Your account sees everything, same ide, same smart apps. The three new accounts are what is added to Alexa and they only see one of the locations each.
Hmmm…I didn’t know I could set up a secondary account that sees only 1 location. I’ll have to look into that…
There seems no way to create an account that is limited to seeing only a single location…
Create a brand new account by signing up with a new email for each. Then go into your main account and add one to each location. I have 4 locations and did the exact same thing.
where exactly[quote=“drbbton, post:35, topic:76289”]
Then go into your main account and add one to each location.
[/quote]
My apologies, I’m missing something. Where exactly do I get the option to add a user to a specific location?
What Barry said!
This NEEDS to be a priority to give SmartThings a competitive edge. There are a lot of us with multiple locations that would be happy to participate in testing a solution…
Its a little buried. Select the location you want to add a user, click more, click “my account”, then add the user. If these are all your locations and not friends (i have mine and 3 friends), you might need to do the opposite, meaning split your users as the owners of each account, then add your main account as an additional user. That situation might not be the easiest, but still possible. This issue is annoying enough, it basically makes the Alexa integration useless. The key is the user you integrate with alexa can only have access to one location.
drbbton - it seems like you have a good handle on how to do this. I have three homes using Alexa, ST and Lutron. Each alexa is a separate Amazon account and each Lutron hub is a separate account. I like the ST ability to keep all three homes in a single account. When I try to select just one home to add to Alexa, the discovery a;lways find the first ST that I installed. I read through your threads but got lost on how to create a new user? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Bottom right of the app, select 'More’
At the top, select which hub you are wanting to pair with Alexa
Select 'my account’
Select 'manage users’
Select 'add user’
Enter a unique email address that you will have access to
(I suggest creating a new gmail account before getting to this step)
Hit ‘done’ on top right
Now login to the email account you used above. You will have an invite to create a new account. Follow directions and create a NEW SmartThings account tied to that email.
Once that is complete, I suggest logging out of your SmartThings app and log in as the new user you created. Verify that user has control of the hub you want.
Now log into the unique version of the Alexa app you wish to integrate with SmartThings.
Add the SmartThings skill, when prompted for your SmartThings login, use the new user login info.
That is what I did and it worked for me. I was at the location I was adding when I did all these steps, I do not know if that was necessary or not.
Good luck.