Supporting other SmartThings setups - Possible?

Hi All,

As I’m sure this happens to most of you, as the tech guy in my family, I’m responsible for supporting a bunch of my close relatives. With that said, when they see stuff I have, they want it too! Case and point:

I installed and support SmartThings setups for my parents and my uncle. At this point in time, if there are things that need to be done and they can’t do it, I will log out of my instance, and log in as one of them on my app. While this works, I noticed a few issues:

  1. When I log in, it believes my uncle’s phone is “Away” thus alarming his alarm/SHM, which becomes an extra step in remembering to disable the alarm before it goes off due to him walking around the house!

  2. On the same note, I believe even when I log out and they log-in, their presence detection gets a bit wonky and we have to “reset” their geo-fence. Not a huge issue if it happens once in a blue moon, but it their issue requires a lot of testing, it’s a hassle every time.

  3. Then, when I log back in as my own account, I have to reset my geo-fence and widgets, etc.

Let aside the face that, while they trust me with full-access to their stuff, I have to have their credentials in order to support them. Another base line “no-no” in the security world.

With that said, is their a way to link my phone and or account to their SmartThings instance where I can help manage and troubleshoot using my own account? I’m thinking in the terms of where people have multiple locations?

My main question would be, if setting up multiple locations, are they truly 100% segregated? Meaning, when I’m using webCoRE for my setup or using presence and routines on a day-to-day basis, will it only affect my location? Am I able to have it where I have to manually pick their location to affect their setup?

Another case where this is going to come in handy, my uncle will be in the hospital for 3-5 days in June. He needs me to take care of his cats, house sit a little bit, etc. Considering he is using SHM with alarm functionality, it would be awesome to have his location also, temporarily, use my phone as a presence sensor to automatically disarm and arm his house. Once again though, I don’t want to screw up my own instance in the process of trying to add theirs.

With all of that out of the way, is this possible? Or do I need to continue to log-in as them on my device to support and maintain their locations?

Thank you!
John

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Each user should have their own user account. In the smartapp on your phone go to More->My Account->Manage Users to add/delete accounts. Your uncle’s phone should have him logged in with his user account and your parents phone(s) with their user account(s).

Example 1 (manage 2 homes as 2 accounts)

You Home:

Your Uncle’s home:

or Example 2 (manage 2 homes as 2 locations under 1 account)

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Thank you for that reply. In this case, adding users seems simple enough, however how do you dictate what location/home you are seeing under “my things, smartapps, routines, etc”

[EDIT] This is what I’m looking to do (“code” incoming…)

**My house**
Main account: 'my_email@email.com'
Second account: 'wifes_email@email.com'
**Uncles House**
Main user: 'uncle_email@email.com'
Support user: 'my_email@email.com'
**Parents House**
Main user: 'dad_email@email.com'
Second user: 'mom_email@email.com'
Support user: 'my_email@email.com'

Only I would have access to different locations. My uncle and parents will not share with each other, they will only share wit me. In each case, I have access to “switch locations” and only see the devices, routines, smartapps for that location?

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Looks correct to me!

And doing the above won’t screw up Alexa integrations (all three houses use it) or presence sensing?

Presence sensing should be OK - but I suggest you still double check your rules since I dont know what/how you have set up your rules right now.

For Alexa, I assume each location has their own account? Here you just have to make sure the skill for the account is connected to the smarrtapp that is installed for the account/location.

In regards to Alexa, Each of us have our own Alexa and smartthings accounts. The Skill is tied to my smartthigns account. However, when I add a second location under my account, will alexa try to use that randomly or will it always be tied to my main location?

The Alexa skill in a account connects to the Alexa smartapp for a location.

I think each location should log into their Alexa skill with the credentials of the main account for that location.

I have not used Alexa across multiple locations and dont know if Alexa would ask you what location to associate with when you log in with an account with multiple locations (where you are not the main account).

There was a previous discussion on this:

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I was having a problem when I setup my dads echo and Alexa, when I added myself to his smartthings account, so I could monitor and setup pistons, my echo would no longer control my devices, it would control his devices, hundreds of miles away. Here is what I am doing to control hub a at my house with Alexa a, and hub b at his house with Alexa b, but still able to control both from 1 ST account. (I think that is what people are trying to do)
Hub A (mine) is registered to me@gmail.com, same with Alexa A (mine) with amazon account me@gmail.com

Hub B (dad) is registered to dad@gmail.com, same with Alexa B (dad) with amazon account dad@gmail.com
Hub A and B both share ST account with email3@gmail.com. I log into ST with email3 and can utilize both hubs from same ST account but they maintain separate abilities through there own Alexa’s.

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