@johnnyletrois
I’m using the local one because I just need it for switches and input_booleans. I think the cloud based one is capable of locks etc but I like the simplicity and the fact it’s local so haven’t really tried the cloud based one yet.
Nice. I just want simple for now too. I’ll give it a go this evening. My only Alexa devices are two dash wands.
Can you discover with them, thought it was only Echos?
One other advantage with that local one is because it does emulate a hue, like the HA component, there’s no more needed to use dimming.
Be interested to see what sort of things your doing with it beyond simple switches off you don’t mind sharing.
Here’s a few of my use cases:
- Switches for turning on Harmony Activities (I have 3 Harmony hubs in my house and only one is allowed to use with their Alexa skill at this time) so I created switches for activities in my Basement and Bedroom.
- Scripts for turning on scenes like my Dinner Scene or Goodnight Scene. I also use the routines and assign it to them so I just have to say “Alexa, goodnight” rather than “Alexa, turn on the Goodnight Scene”.
- Input Booleans that control conditions in my automations. For example, I have one called “Announcements” and if there’s severe weather, it announces it over my Sonos speakers, except there are times I don’t want to be disturbed such as when I have guests over or in the middle of the night. So if I want to disable them I just say “Alexa, turn off Announcements”. Also automatically doesn’t run when Goodnight scene is on.
1 Like
FYI - They did add another skill cleverly called “Harmony - secondary hub” to use with another hub. Though for you I don’t see a “third hub” version. 
@Jer78, I had a strange instance where one of my echos reported not seeing any “smart devices”. After a couple of standard resets i did the following in the alexa app:
-de-register the echo from my Amazon account.
-factory reset (on echo press volume up and mic button at the same time until you get the yellow light)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=202080910
Then re-conected the echo to my amazon account/network and the devices were visible again.
Perhaps worth a try.
@juan11perez Thanks for the suggestion. I actually deleted everything from my Amazon account and re-activated them all and it still didn’t resolve it. Oh well…at least Node-Red works for me so I’ll just lay emulated_hue to rest
sorry it didnt help.
thanks for the Family Map 
Just thought of something else unusual that happened before. have you got the javascript_version (https://home-assistant.io/components/frontend/_in latest?
When first released in 0.59 it was blocking some google assistant instances and the pychromecast. I dont know enough to say why, but my chromecast stopped working. When I commented out javascript_version: latest, it worked again.
Cheers Jeremy, do need to get my head around input booleans, have managed without to avoid them so far but know they’ll simplify/extend some of my automations.
As your using a Harmony hub, have you tried emulated_roku, easy to set up and you can assign any key to trigger things in HA which also means they’re easier to integrate into activities.
1 Like
That’s just the original red skill renamed after they finally deigned to share the blue skill with the rest of us but does have the added bonus of getting around some conflicts when smart home skill names get a bit too close for Alexa to get right every time.
@Bobby_Nobble Yeah like I said, I mostly use input_booleans for configuring options and then use them as conditions in my scripts. I find they are extremely useful because I don’t always want the automations to run or parts of my text to speech in scripts to say so I find they are incredibly useful. I’m sure you’ll find tons of uses for them. Here’s some examples:
Emulated_roku? Never heard of it before. Cool! I have to check this out! Thanks!
1 Like
Chars.
Here it is…
Don’t know why it got overlooked when @mindigmarton launched it six months ago, I missed it completely, but it’s great that he’s still committed now people are waking up to it.
1 Like
funny enough but my situation is about the same.
used emulated hue for a long time, but it stopped working about two weeks ago.
I’ve deleted all devices and ran discovery but this time nothing was found. tried resetting unlinking etc but no luck.
Ended up with HA Cloud which worked as soon as I moved alexa to the US store. But i’m not going to pay $5/
Tonight I decided to give node-red a chance an it is amazing!! I love it.
Local alexa worked instantly no idea why it is different from emu_hue.
if you want to try it:
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_9.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs npmsudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm node-red
sudo npm install node-red-contrib-alexa-local
jkw
1 Like
Just one additional question: I’ve implemented all my rules into node red now and let it run for a day. It turned out to consume quite a bit of cpu power (load changed to 0.5 from 0.08-ish) have you seen similar behavior? This is my setup at the moment
Jkw
I only have this active and I also saw an increase RAM and cpu. however I still prefer Node-Red from the mere hours I tinkered with it.
[{"id":"c55b6686.6e93e8","type":"api-call-service","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Turn off lights","server":"54dd7c56.249fa4","service_domain":"light","service":"turn_off","data":"{ \"entity_id\": \"light.ledstrip\" }","x":1640,"y":100,"wires":[]},{"id":"6cce8584.f1ff94","type":"api-call-service","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Turn on Lights","server":"54dd7c56.249fa4","service_domain":"light","service":"turn_on","data":"{\"entity_id\": \"light.ledstrip\", \"brightness\": 1}","x":1640,"y":20,"wires":[]},{"id":"473c32e9.8db284","type":"api-current-state","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Off Already?","server":"54dd7c56.249fa4","halt_if":"off","entity_id":"light.ledstrip","x":1450,"y":100,"wires":[["c55b6686.6e93e8"]]},{"id":"d1d9c656.37bdd8","type":"server-state-changed","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Livingroom Motion","server":"54dd7c56.249fa4","entityidfilter":"binary_sensor.office_motion","haltifstate":"","x":150,"y":20,"wires":[["18cbacbb.a70c53","21376354.e5db9c"]],"outputLabels":["dark"]},{"id":"47c04288.25a8ac","type":"api-current-state","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Already On?","server":"54dd7c56.249fa4","halt_if":"on","entity_id":"light.ledstrip","x":1450,"y":20,"wires":[["6cce8584.f1ff94"]]},{"id":"ba4cbf35.7af01","type":"stoptimer","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","duration":"10","units":"Second","payloadtype":"num","payloadval":"0","name":"10sec test","x":1010,"y":100,"wires":[["b927130c.5e375"],[]]},{"id":"f4f97eab.03359","type":"inject","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"TEST Livingroom 'motion' ","topic":"","payload":"1","payloadType":"num","repeat":"","crontab":"","once":false,"x":130,"y":180,"wires":[["21376354.e5db9c"]]},{"id":"d3f7f7da.2fa938","type":"time-range-switch","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Dusk-Dawn range","lat":"52.007288","lon":"5.722599","startTime":"dusk","endTime":"dawn","startOffset":"-30","endOffset":"30","x":570,"y":100,"wires":[["de3c6260.4bf7f"],[]]},{"id":"b927130c.5e375","type":"api-current-state","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Guest Mode ON/OFF","server":"54dd7c56.249fa4","halt_if":"on","entity_id":"input_boolean.guest_mode","x":1240,"y":100,"wires":[["473c32e9.8db284"]]},{"id":"c656cae0.f56cc8","type":"server-state-changed","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Guest Mode refresh","server":"54dd7c56.249fa4","entityidfilter":"input_boolean.guest_mode","haltifstate":"","x":150,"y":100,"wires":[["21376354.e5db9c"]],"outputLabels":["Dark"]},{"id":"aa9cd92a.9e1538","type":"api-current-state","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Home?","server":"54dd7c56.249fa4","halt_if":"away","entity_id":"group.athome","x":1200,"y":20,"wires":[["47c04288.25a8ac"]]},{"id":"21376354.e5db9c","type":"switch","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"","property":"payload","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"eq","v":"off, 1","vt":"str"}],"checkall":"true","outputs":1,"x":370,"y":100,"wires":[["d3f7f7da.2fa938"]]},{"id":"18cbacbb.a70c53","type":"api-current-state","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Dark by weather (test)","server":"54dd7c56.249fa4","halt_if":"0","entity_id":"sensor.dark_sky_cloud_coverage","x":580,"y":20,"wires":[["84349707.e62bf8"]]},{"id":"84349707.e62bf8","type":"switch","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"Minimum clouds %","property":"payload","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"gte","v":"100","vt":"num"}],"checkall":"true","outputs":1,"x":810,"y":20,"wires":[["ba4cbf35.7af01","aa9cd92a.9e1538"]]},{"id":"de3c6260.4bf7f","type":"switch","z":"ed017238.5b8b8","name":"","property":"payload","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"eq","v":"1, off","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"0","vt":"str"}],"checkall":"false","outputs":2,"x":770,"y":100,"wires":[["ba4cbf35.7af01","aa9cd92a.9e1538"],["ba4cbf35.7af01"]]},{"id":"54dd7c56.249fa4","type":"server","z":"","name":"Home Assistant (Hassio)","url":"http://192.168.178.42:8123","pass":"welcome"}]
FYI I have all the passwords still on default without encryption because its my test setup 
Well, after exploring emulated_hue and tons of switch entity, the amount of components that exposed to Alexa is too big to start filter them one by one.
After week of searching I found node-red best framework to workaround the amount of entity exposed to Alexa.