How do Smart devices discover/interact with Echo and at what level?

I have recently installed some AOne smart devices (AOne Hub, Inline Dimmer and Rotary Dimmer). After some help from Aurora to get the inline dimmer configured I wanted to use the Alexa Skill to control the devices. However despite what I do Alexa never discovers the AOne devices.
My question is:- Where does the discovery take place? Is it at the local level via the LAN or between the two accounts Alexa and Aurora (Goobee)?
I have other WiFi connected switches and these are easily discovered and work well. However the Aurora is Zigbee network so there is no local connection to the LAN other than through the AOne hub and the internet.
Is discovery between the two accounts facilitated by the Alexa Skill which presumably integrates the two?
Many thanks
Fozzie

Are you connecting the AOne devices to a SmartThings hub or another hub?

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Hi Jimmy,
I have connected the AOne dimmer to an Aurora AOne hub but cannot get the device discovered in the Alexa App hence my question so that I know where to start looking e.g is it an issue on the local LAN or the Alexa skill or an issue between accounts
Fozzie

This forum is for people who are using the Samsung smartthings home automation platform, so all of the questions and answers are in that context.

It’s a Very active forum, so it often comes up near the top in a Google search for general home automation questions, but it’s not a general home automation forum.

So within the context of this forum, you would not be using the Aurora gateway, you would be using a smartthings hub instead, and the integration with Alexa would be via that account.

Different Devices have different types of echo integration

As far as where the echo integration occurs, it depends on the specific device, but in most cases it’s cloud To cloud managed by the appropriate skill, as you suspected. You link your two accounts at the time that you install the skill.

After that, your echo sends the request to the Amazon cloud which sends the request to the third-party cloud, which sends it to your hub which sends it to the individual devices. If the Internet isn’t available, that kind of integration won’t work.

But there are some exceptions. And in particular if you have an echo show second generation or an echo plus, then you can use that as your Zigbee controller and get local integration. ( But then you wouldn’t be using the Aurora hub.)

Your specific situation

Anyway, in your case you will need to get in touch with Aurora support as it’s unlikely anyone here even owns their gateway as it can’t be used at the same time with the same device as the Smartthings Hub, it’s one or the other.

To be honest, I don’t even know if their hub offers Alexa integration or not. Again, as I mentioned, people in this forum would be using the Samsung SmartThings integration.

Aurora AOne Devices can be connected to a smartthings hub, so that’s probably why your search brought you here, but the answers that would work for this community unfortunately won’t work for your setup.

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Thanks JD Roberts,
Yes I appreciate this is a Smart Things forum but my original question was phrased to be a more generic question that presumably applies to all smart technology?
Thank you for your explanation it goes a long way towards explaining/confirming how the systems interact.
I have asked for help from Aurora but its rather slow in coming and as yet there is no user forum like SmartThings
Again thanks for your reply
Fozzie

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General question, but typically a very specific answer. :sunglasses:

For example, the most common reason why someone using the Samsung smartthings platform Finds that their new devices are not visible to Echo is that they didn’t realize they had to go into the SmartThings app (not the skill) And give permission for a third-party to access their account information for each device.

Once that is done, then you can use echo to discover the devices via the skill.

So usually we end up answering a very similar question with specifics based on which SmartThings app they are using, just to get them to the right place where they can authorise their discovery from the SmartThings side.

There is also an option to authorise echo to discover all smartthings -controlled devices, which has pros and cons.

And for a few specific device classes the person has to disable the SmartThings skill, then log out of the Alexa app, then log back into the Alexa app, and then re-enable the SmartThings skill. And then do discovery.

One of those two things will solve this issue for probably 95% of the people asking a similar question in this forum. But neither are relevant to your situation because they are both specific to the SmartThings platform. You’re going to be using a different app and a different skill.

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Again very useful information. I will try some of these suggestions
Thank you again

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Just for information and anyone who may find this post the problem related to the Aurora Gooee website which was undergoing updates and reconfiguration. I finally got a reply from Aurora saying this was the issue and that an update to the firmware on the Hub and reconnecting the account would fix it which it now has,
Thank you again for trying to assist.
Fozzie
PS Aurora now show SmartThings Compatibility on their website!!

yup. Their devices connect directly to SmartThings hub. So to integrate, you would totally ditch their hub and system and move the devices over to SmartThings.

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