I have a main home and a rental property. The rental has Kasa, Alexa, Ring alarm. There is smart lighting, smarts locks, Echos, FireTVs.
I don’t want to use a completely separate Alexa account for this property but I can’t figure out a way to secure the properties from controlling each other, I need the properties to function independently under the same email.
As @Paul_Oliver said, it’s an Amazon restriction, you’d have to talk to them. But they mostly seem concerned about limiting account sharing, so people have been requesting this for years and it’s still not possible.
It does actually allow you to separate them. I actually have two ‘locations’ in Alexa on the email, but it’s nothing more than a grouping and separate geolocation. Commands work at both places against the other which is the issue.
The primary purpose is to localize weather, traffic, and a few other features to that specific Alexa-enabled device. So you could get different traffic at the office than at home.
This is the Samsung SmartThings forum and, being that Alexa is an Amazon product, this would be the incorrect forum for this question. The two are unrelated aside from Alexa being able to voice control SmartThings via a skill.
The solution is simple though. Create a separate email for the rental. What would the downside be?
The usual downside expressed in the Amazon forums is that then you then have to pay for Prime for each location. (Which is probably exactly what Amazon wants.)
If it’s just one extra location that may not be a big deal, but at $139/year for something not required by other platforms, it’s annoying.
Apple used to have a related problem although not with too much voice control but rather too little. From time to time a HomeKit hub would show up in multiple locations owned by the same ID, which could make voice commands unusable if the two homes were on different WiFi networks. This was reportedly fixed just last month, but it’s early days yet when tracking a problem that only occurs occasionally.
I’ve asked in both forums since I figured ST users would be doing more advanced things.
The main downside for me is I have to manage separate accounts for every location. With Ring I only need one login for all properties. If it’s separate I also can’t run any automations across all properties. To do anything, I’ll have to logout, login repeat. I won’t be able to see anything at a glance.
True. The main things you’d get with prime are more music and messaging.
For the first few years, you couldn’t get any music without prime, and it appears that was an issue for some rental owners, who would get complaints from visitors. That seems to be a source of quite a few of the complaints in the Amazon forums.
But it looks like they added more non prime music options about two years ago, so that’s no longer an issue.
Thanks for pointing that out, I wasn’t up-to-date on that one.