Ok great thanks, that was a month ago but it gives a glimmer of hope that it wont be left in limbo. The odd thing is this functionality was already in the old skill, so you would assume it would be baked in to the “new” skill by default so we arent regressing instead of progressing.
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Hi - I have searched the community for this question and didn’t find anyone with a similar problem so I am hoping somebody here might be able to help out. I have two physical locations each with its own Smartthings hub and Smartthings location, all under one Smartthings account. I am using the new Smartthings app. The problem is for various reasons I need a unique alexa account for each location, and I want to link both alexa accounts to the same smartthings account. When I link both of them (with the new Smartthings skill), everything works fine for a matter of hours up to a day or so it seems. Then, one of the links will break, and all of the Smartthings devices in that Alexa account will show as “server unresponsive”. The other linked Alexa account continues to work fine and I am able to control all of my Smartthings devices through Alexa.
I do not have any duplicate devices and I have disabled the SmartThings devices in Alexa for the respective location that is not the location that is meant to be controlled by that Alexa account. I have tried many different things to troubleshoot, including contacting support for each app, looking at alexa.amazon.com and ide.smartthings.com to make sure I don’t have duplicate skills, devices, etc. I have disabled the skill in each location multiple times, and I have basically burned down my whole setup and rebuilt from scratch. Same result
Incredibly frustrating, I can’t figure out why the links would spontaneously break after hours or a day or two, with nothing else changing. The only hint or clue I have is that Lars wrote on this thread in December regarding a completely different problem “the problem should resolve itself next time Alexa runs a silent discovery in the background which happens automatically every 12h." Is it possible this process breaks the link?
I appreciate any insight or help anybody may have to explain this. I am trying not to get my hopes up that it can be “fixed” without intervention from Alexa or Smartthings, but the support of each has not been particularly illuminating.
Thank you
Theres a post from Lars up in this thread somewhere that basically says that doesn’t work… Can’t remember why - but it’s somehow related to the 1:1 nature of Alexa accounts to ST accounts. Given that, this should probably work as a workaround:
Create a second Samsung ID, then use Smartthings (Members under the hamburger menu) invite that ID to participate in both locations. Then use THAT ID to link your Second Alexa account to ST.
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That is brilliant, thank you. I have set that up and so far so good. I’ll report back if the link breaks in a few hours like my previous setup, but it does seem like the workaround should work. The only trouble I had setting it up is that alexa wanted to keep automatically linking to my primary Smartthings/samsung account without asking for a sign-in (both on the phone and on the web) so I had to basically clear out my samsung/smartthings primary id info before trying to link. I ended up doing the link on my laptop, and while clearing cookies probably would have solved it, I opened up Edge instead of Chrome which I normally use. Thank you again! Now if only I can do the same for my Ring accounts - I will see if they have a similar member/invite feature. . .
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It should stay up - basically what you’ve done is simulate how two different people in the same household connect thier accounts. It just so happens in my case it’s my wife - in yours, you have a phantom account. The only real down side to the configuration (or maybe it’s an upside in your case) Is that the two different alexa accounts have to be maintained separately - skills, naming, etc. You can absolutely name things differently in the two alexa accounts so voice commands could get confusing if they’re out of sync (OR maybe you need separate naming for the other account)
Good luck
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Is there an easy way to change a hub and its devices to a new samsung id or is that not necessary? My assumption is that you are saying to take the hub at one location and create a new account for it. Then connect the two accounts. Can you clarify if that is necessary.
Thanks
You don’t have to do anything with the hub. This is account only.
Go to account.samsung.com and create a new account - for clarity sake do not use any ID ou’re currently using with Smartthings… (I create a dummy account on outlook.com or gmail.com and use that as the base email ID for your new Samsung ID
You go into members and add new member - fill in the email ID of the samsung account you created.
Use a device and login to the app with the new ID - it should also show any locations you’ve invited it to.
Once all this works, link Amazon to SmartThings using the NEW ID you created above.
There is no easy way to move hubs between locations, but it is not necessary in this case.
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Appreciate the help. I setup the new account and linked them. When I sign into the new account it shows the location hub as offline although it is online in the existing account. Physically it is online and working fine. Same result on multiple phones signed into the new account. Anything I might have missed? Maybe it takes time for it to work?
Took awhile but it shows online now. Thanks.
Is anyone else having issues with virtual switches again?
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Which means…?
I am just being ironic. A lot of issue with virtual switches. This one fired by itself this morning. History list is 3-4 screenshot long of same switch going on, for no reason.
I am quite sure mine where working this morning but they are not working anymore
Yesterday I had problems, today is ok …
Mine (Virtual Switches for Alexa) are not work today either!
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If you run a discovery now, that will fix the issue you are seeing. If you dont run a manual discovery, there is an automatic discovery happening every 12h that will resolve it.
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What is the expected behavior for sensors triggering Alexa routines now? Should we expect this to be reliable, or are the engineers still working on it?
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It should be reliable, it was due to a configuration error.
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Excellent, thanks.
In that case, there has been a new problem reported for the last four or five days that virtual Switches are not working if they are actuated under some circumstances. There have been multiple reports on the forum in these in the context of STHM not changing mode, but when you dig deeper those have all been because somebody is using a virtual switch as a proxy for mode and then turning it on and off with webcore or Alexa.
I noticed there have been some recent reports in this thread in the same timeframe about virtual devices that stopped working. And I am not sure if those were only referring to triggering routines or if they were referring to the devices themselves not working.
Here’s the thread discussing the issue in detail in the STHM context
Again, this is a new problem which just started happening in the last week or so.