I have 3 Echo devices: Echo (2016), Echo (2017) and an Echo Show 2nd Gen. I also have Philips Hue hub, and a SmartThings Hub for related accessories, and have the Hue and SmartThings Skills enabled too. It’s possible that one of the Echo devices is an Echo Plus, but I can’t see anything in the app or on the Echo itself that indicates this.
Without the skills enabled, some devices just don’t work.
In the Alexa app, I keep getting MANY multiple Philips Hue and SmartThings devices listed. Almost every time I open the app is says 20+ new devices detected, and it makes creating routines in the Alexa app almost impossible as there might be 5 duplicates of a light and I’ve no idea which is the right one.
I should also note that the Hue app and SmartThings app don’t show any duplicate devices - those are “clean” and easy to use.
How do I tidy up this mess and prevent it from happening again Amazon’s advice is to remove everything and start again…but that’d break a whole load of routines etc I have working well.
First question is how many amazon accounts and how many ST accounts. Also how is Hue connected to ST and to Amazon, same question for ST to Amazon, etc. (I think I know what’s up here but these questions are necessary for clarification)
In the SmartThings app under Linked Services there is just Amazon Alexa.
In the Hue app I can’t see anything about connected services anywhere
In the Alexa app I have the SmartThings and Hue skills enabled.
if you think I’ve missed something or not looking in the right place please say so
Hope that’s clear and useful! Many thanks for replying.
Yep… try disabling them instead which should stop that process of them being found again
If you have both hue and St skills enabled, i would suggest disabling the ST linked ones for the hue bulbs. Each should show whether they are linked by which service.
I feel like that is papering over the issue, rather than fixing it
I just had a closer look and it’s only bulbs that are duplicating.
The “Connected Via” property for the blubs shows one of the following for each
SmartThings
Signify Netherlands B.V
innr
Hue Hub
They aren’t all Hue blubs, but I’m not sure why it would show innr and Signify Netherlands B.V?! Or is Signify Netherlands B.V another name for Philips?
Part of the problem is every device you have in ST will import into Alexa when the ST skill is enabled. There is no method currently to only select specific devices in ST that would appear in Alexa. So, if you have Hue connected to both ST and Alexa, you will end up with duplicated devices in Alexa. The best method is to disable the devices you do not want in the Alexa app and my recommendation is to disable the ST connected devices. Same situation for other integrations with ST and Alexa.
If you delete devices, they are simply going to be found again.
You mentioned some devices do not work in Alexa… you can identify which integration they are using… best to disable those.
AFAIK, It’s Philips - their Netherlands official title. Sylvania bulbs can show as Sylvania or Osram or any of two or three other names. Not unusual.
@jkp is exactly right as to what’s happening. There is currently NO WAY to filter devices FROM SmartThings TO Alexa. It has been asked for - ST claims to be working on it but it’s a heavy lift - do not expect it anytime soon.
The only way you can sort it is to disable any device you don’t want in Alexa (As he said - DISABLE - do NOT delete, ST will repopulate any device that’s still online, again you’ve probably seen that too.) Also FYI - some devices don’t work well in Alexa when disabled - like thermostats… Alexa doesn’t handle that very well for some reason. Just have to deal with it for now I’m afraid.
When determining how to connect things, (who gets disabled in Alexa) I always go back to a philosophy of ‘shortest/least hops’ So in your scenario - you could have Hue hooked to both ST AND Alexa, Alexa can connect to both ST and Hue and ST can hook to Both Alexa and ST. As you see it creates duplicates all over the place.
In this case Disable the ST copy of the bulbs (and any other copy that isn’t connected directly by the Hue Skill) BECAUSE - if you issue a command that impacts the Hue bulbs FROM Alexa, you want the fewest ‘hops’ between the point of command, in this case, Alexa to the system that will make the change - in this case Hue. But you don’t want to disconnect Hue from ST so that ST can see the results of the change.
Do this evaluation in Alexa for each system connected and it will become apparent which device needs to be disabled in each case.
The original parent company of Hue was Royal Philips, who then spun off the lighting division into its own company, Philips Lighting.
Philips Lighting was acquired by a different company in 2018 with the new company name of Signify Netherlands b.v. The devices still use the brand name of Hue, but the manufacturer is now Signify.
I’ve only heard of the signify name showing up in the Alexa app if you connected the bulbs directly to an echo device without using a Hue bridge. So I’m not quite sure how you got that in the situation you described.
Also, there are two different hue integrations available for smartthings. One is for if you have a smartthings hub and will run locally. The other is for if you do not have a smartthings hub, in which case you can use a cloud cloud integration to your Hue account. It’s also possible that that cloud integration would show up under signify, I’m not sure. But in any case, it is possible to have both of those hue integrations active in SmartThings at the same time, which will give you duplicates. Here’s a thread which discusses the two different Hue integrations with smartthings and what to do if you accidentally activated both of them.
All of which is to say I have definitely seen situations with three duplicates in the echo app: one from smartthings, one from the smartthings cloud integration, and one from the hue bridge skill.
So…everything @jkp said is right, and I also agree with the recommendation to use the native hue app instead of the smartthings app for Alexa integration.
But before doing that I would first check the smartthings app and make sure you don’t have both Hue integrations active.
And I would check the Alexa app to see if you have any hue bulbs directly connected to an echo device.
And then go ahead and disable the devices created by smartthings.
That should leave you with just one set of devices, the ones being connected through the Phillips hue integration to Alexa.
Also…innr is an entirely different bulb manufacturer, but their devices do work with a hue bridge. not sure how their name got into the mix unless it’s just a manufacturer listing.
I logged into the Hue website and under Cloud were multiple instances of Alexa - in fact there mere multiple instances of a few things in the Cloud and Local sections so I had a clean up.
Then in the Alexa app a bunch of duplicates were showing as “unresponsive” which I removed leaving only the “Hue hub” options - so far so good, no more duplicates!
Fingers crossed it stays this way! Many thanks all for your help
One note: If you have a smartthings/hue integration, smartthings will keep adding the hue devices to Alexa, as @jkp noted above. The only way to deal with that at the present time is to let them be added and then go into the Alexa app, not the smartthings app or the Hue app, and individually “disable“ the ones that smartthings added. Not “delete“ them.
Then you’ll only have one set left, the one from the Hue/Alexa integration, which is what you want.
So I’m going through the same issue, except that some Alexa update now combines all the duplicated lights and it seems impossible to separate out the SmartThings bulbs from the Hue bulbs…
If you click on the Devices details in the Alexa app it should show you which platform is providing the integration. So you could identify ones being reported through smartthings versus ones being reported through the native hue integration that way. But if it’s really combining two entries, I don’t know what you will see, I no longer have any of those.
Here’s one of my hue bulbs in the Alexa app. (“Signify” is the corporate name for Hue now.)
Amazon’s advice is to remove everything and start again…but that’d break a whole load of routines etc I have working well.
