Multiple Locations

General Discussion
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So far my experience with SmartThings and Alexa has been great. We have two locations, our primary home and a vacation home. Was excited to set up the second locations this weekend. Purchased another Smart Hub and Alexa and was ready to go. I set up the new hub, added it to my SmartThings and thought everything was ready to roll. I next needed to add the Alexa skill to this location. Well that was when I hit the wall. I couldn’t figure out how to add the Alexa skill to this hub/location and after researching I finally called support. After some research they told me there is currently no multi-location support for SmartThings or Alexa. I would have to setup a new SmartThings account and have a different Amazon account as Amazon doesn’t support that either. Wow - everything has been pretty amazing and the platform seemed pretty mature but this is a huge disappointment. They said their engineers are working on this but they had no idea when they might support something like this. It’s a shame - I was ready to dump ADT but not now.

I hope someday they address this - until then the Hub is being returned and I am stuck with ADT. Fingers crossed this gets fixed soon.

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smart things has multiple locations… there is a pulldown under the app… alexa does not… nor does the alexa smart app in smartthings. the alexa app even on the same phone has issues if you try to move locations… you need a whole separate alexa account for second location and a separate phone/tablet.

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Simplest workaround for now is two SmartThings Accounts.

However, ActionTiles let’s customers mix and match Things from multiple Locations (and even multiple Accounts) on one or many dashboard Panels. Yes… gloating: we did it correctly… Amazon didn’t.

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Your right Amazon didn’t for sure. A little surprised but hopeful that they can resolve this at some point. I realize I don’t need Alexa but we are pretty enamoured with the voice command. Have been a zwave house hold for a long time - Alexa adds something for sure.

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It’s rather easy (though not “trivial” to fix), but I don’t know who is responsible for the integration… Amazon or SmartThings??

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Well it definitely needs to be fixed in amazon first. As I said they don’t support it locally even in there own app. I had the app and a separate login in another location… worked fine. When i got home and switched the login in their app to the first location… Devices in the alexa app were all FFFd up it kept finding devices in the other login. I eventually had to remove the app and clear the cache and delete the alexa directory (in android) and re-install before I could get it finding the correct devices with the login I was using.

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Isn’t the issue really the Amazon ST Skill needs to be aware of locations?

FWIW, I currently have an echo at the primary home & a dot at the other place. Both are aware of their locations and provide the correct weather reports…

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I too have Echos (Dots) in both locations, acuatlly multiple in each. You can make it location aware through the Alexa app. Things like weather etc work just fine. I was wondering if it maturity or intent on the part of Amazon. When I talked with support they told me one work around would be to have an alternate Amazon account, but that would require me to purchase Prime and music services for that account as well.

Hard to say right now - if SmartThings becomes more location aware as there engineer told me they are planning there may be a coding way around it. Right now not worth the risk of blowing up all my automations…

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