I’ve got a bit of a dilemma, and I don’t know who’s to blame. Perhaps someone here can help me?
The part of my set up that is of concern is this: Harmony Hub into Smart Things into Amazon Echo, plus Philips Hue into Amazon Echo.
I’ve got three Hue bulbs set up in an echo group called “Living Room”. Also in that Living Room Group, I have my Harmony Hub activities “Apple TV”, “XBOX”, and “Freeview”.
For some reason, when I say “Alexa switch on the Living Room Lights,” she switches on the Apple TV too! Is this because the Harmony Activities show up in Alexa simply as “Smart Things Device”?
Can I do anything in SmartThings to edit these Activities so Alexa doesn’t think they’re a light?
My guess here is that Harmony is not causing the problem.
I think Alexa is ignoring the word lights. You have the three bulbs in an Alexa group called Living Room, but wouldn’t you also have a Room in the Hue app with the same name? If so this will also be visible in your devices list as a device.You should get rid of the Alexa group as you don’t need it and control the lights using the already existing Hue group.
If I’ve got Hue light groups, should I tell Alexa to forget the individual bulbs in each room?
I imagine if you did this you would soon get very frustrated. When next Discovering Devices, Alexa will pick them all back up again and you’ll have to remember to remove them again. And again the next time…
I wish there was an option to select which hues were picked up by Alexa. Since getting Alexa I’ve had to think very carefully about what my devices’ names were (e.g. a light called Living Room Main got renamed to Big Light as it was impossible to control either it or the Living Room group).
Yea, I’ve got to be a bit careful with naming, as my wife will need everything using the same words with her Apple Watch/iPhone. I have everything dual loaded into Alexa and HomeKit (via HomeBridge) so that everything just works the same.
Essentially I’m using Alexa as a stop-gap until Apple releases their own version (at probably double the cost). Lol
I’m not sure if I’m misreading what you stated, but when you create an Echo Group called living room, and you say turn on living room, Alexa will turn on everything in that group. This is by design and what alexa groups are used for. Alexa also see most “switches” as potential lights, so the word light is usually optional. If I have a group named “test”, the saying “alexa turn on test” or “alexa turn on test lights” will have the same result. At least that’s the way it has always worked for my integrationd.
yep. I was taking the Apple HomeKit understanding of Rooms and incorrectly translating it into Echo’s Groups… as in the Living Room could have Lights, TV, Heating, Fan, Sensors, etc… and you called them depending on their type. “Living Room Lights” “Living Room Heating” but for Echo, that’s wrong, as the Groups are not Rooms.