Can my Alexa Echo Show 2nd Gen be used as my hub for my smartthings button? I can’t get the dam thing to be discovered via smartthings app or Alexa. I have enabled the skill, connected my accounts, added my Alexa in the smartthings app. Any idas?
Do you own a SmartThings hub?
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Maybe, but it won’t do anything. ( echo can’t do anything with the button when it’s connected as intended to your smartthings hub, either.)
Handheld buttons can’t themselves be turned on and off. By any system. They aren’t intended to receive activation commands. They just send “button pressed“ messages to their hub.
Echo does have its own routines. ( not SmartThings routines) These are in an “if this then that” format. At present, the “if” from a device can only be from a motion or contact answer. Not a switch coming on. Not a button being pressed. With the single exception of Amazon’s own echo button. ( see the note at the end of this post.)
And echo does not share information about any devices directly connected to it with SmartThings except through the echo routine method. You can set up an echo routine so that pressing an Echo button ( that specific model and no other) could result in echo sending a message to smartthings to turn on a switch that was controlled by smartthings. But that’s it.
In Summary
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Most buttons, including the SmartThings button, cannot be the “that“ in a rule for any system, including both smartthings and echo.
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The SmartThings button can be the “if” in a rule created in the SmartThings app, but only if it is joined to a smartthings hub. Not joined to echo plus or the echo show second generation.
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The echo button can be the “if” in a rule created in the Alexa app, but only if it is joined to an echo device. It can’t be joined to SmartThings.
So while I believe it might be possible to have the SmartThings button join the zigbee hub which is inside an echo show second generation, it wouldn’t show up on the device list in the SmartThings app, and you wouldn’t be able to create any rules for it in either app.
What specifically were you hoping to use it for?
More information about the Echo Buttons
By the way, if you haven’t seen them, these are pretty cool Devices. They are large, about the size of a pack of playing cards, but that makes them very good for either a table top control, nightstand, or even stuck on the wall.
You can’t control the colors which show up when you press them. But they are white in their resting state.
They usually come in a two pack for $20, which is a decent price.
You can use them for games, but from a Home Automation standpoint, you can use them to trigger an echo routine in the Alexa app. And from there you can get to a virtual switch in a smartthing SmartThings system. 
You could even put one in your car if you like, but it’s only going to work if it’s within a relatively short transmission range of the echo device that it is linked to.
Anyway, they’re quite practical for a number of home automation use cases. But I don’t know if they are too large for what you intended.
No, I was under the impression that I could use my Echo Show 2nd Gen as hub.
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- I added SmartThings Skill in Alexa
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- I connected my SmartThings app to my Alexa Show
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- When i put the button in pairing mode the SmartThings app nor my alexa can discover the device.
I am unable to get my Alexa to even find the device? Is there some sort trick to that? I am able get the SmartThings button in “pairing mode” which I am assuming is this alternating red/green state on the button. Any ideas on getting Alexa to discover it?
- I have Skill enable on Alexa App.
- Put the Button in pairing mode. Do the “discover devices” in the Alexa app… but it does not find it.
You can use it as a hub for some zig bee devices, but for the reasons in my previous post, you won’t be able to do anything with the SmartThings button even if you can join it.
And other devices joined to an echo show second generation will then work with echo for voice control, but they will still never show up in your SmartThings app because echo doesn’t share that information.
So right now, the only things you could use the echo as a hub for that would give you any value in SmartThings are a few contact or motion sensors.
But you still might want to use them just for a voice control without a smart things hub. Or in Amazon routines.
For example, I am quadriparetic and dependent on voice control for everything. So I like to have one switch which would work with echo even if the Internet is not available. That’s possible using the zigbee hub inside the echo show second generation.
So I got the following battery-operated zigbee smart switch which fits over my regular dumb switch. I connected it directly to the echo, not to my smartthings hub.
It never shows up as a device in the SmartThings app, and I don’t expect it to.
I can turn it on by voice to echo.
I can also turn it on from the smartthings rule using an indirect method that relies on a sensor that smartthings can recognize being the “If”in an echo routine. If you want more information about that method, let us know. But otherwise it’s invisible to smartthings. And turning it on at the wall or from echo will not send any information to smartthings.
It’s still useful to me, but it depends on the details of exactly what you want to do.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K3TRG6W/
So yes, the echo show second generation can be used as a zigbee hub: but that is not a hub that will be recognized by the SmartThings app, and none of the devices connected directly to that hub will show up in the SmartThings app.
Instead, the zigbee hub inside the echo show second generation is intended to give you voice control of zigbee devices when you don’t have a separate hub like SmartThings. Or allow you to use the device as the “that“ in an echo routine.
Did that help clear up things?
Buy a SmartThings hub?!? The SmartThings Skill on Alexa app is one way integration. You can add SmartThings connected to Alexa, but you cannot add devices connected to Echo in SmartThings. Likewise, the SmartThings app requires a SmartThings hub.
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Alexa won’t discover it because, as I explained above, there’s nothing Alexa can do with it. Nothing. It can’t receive the button presses. It can’t voice control the button. It can’t use it in an alexa routine. So it isn’t going to show up even if it does join.
At the present time, the Alexa app will list zigbee 3.0 switches, lights, locks, and some sensors if those devices are connected directly to the echo show. Basically the stuff on the following “simple setup” list.
The smartthings brand motion sensors are there. The smartthings button is not.
That used to be true, but with the new V3 app it no longer is. There are lots of Wi-Fi devices that can be connected without a hub and used in rules created in the new SmartThings app. Also Samsung smart appliances and televisions. So the new expectation is that there may be someone who has one of those $4000 Samsung televisions and also has a few WiFi lights and they can have them all working together through the V3 app.
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Was thinking specifically about the SmartThings button that the OP mentioned. 
to limit the confusion. I guess I added to it, instead 
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