Hey - I feel like I’m just failing basic Googling (and I imagine you’ll all tell me as much once I post this), but is there a way to get Areas exposed to Alexa? I can get individual entities there but I’d love to just tell Alexa to turn off all devices in an area, for example.
Googling hasn’t been fruitful. Any way to do this?
Sujal
Google It!!
no seriously
WHY?
Alexa groups already does that
I just tried it from my Alexa app
"Alexa turn on master bedroom "
and she did
lights, lamps (connect to plugs) and the TV
Sure it would be great if i didn’t have to set them up on the Alexa app and use the area from HA, but one day it will happen.
You hit it on the head - I don’t want to set it up twice. I am doing what you suggest as a workaround, but I’m just trying to understand why Areas even exist? What benefit is there? In the original feature ticket, they do mention Google Assistant integration, so I’m hoping someone knows if that’s coming for Alexa.
Thanks,
Sujal
Areas is a relatively new feature. I don’t think their possibilities have been fully taken advantage of yet. You should request Areas be shared with Alexa in the Feature Request forum.
Before features were a thing I defined ‘groups’ of devices (eg. group.bedroom_lights, group.kitchen_lights). That way saying “Alexa, Turn off the bedroom lights” turns off all three lamps, instead of just the primary one. And, that makes one less Alexa routine I have to define to handle the variety of ways the wife, kids, and in-laws ask Alexa to do things. 
Is there any news on this, this would be an awesome improvement.
Tomorrow’s 2021.9 release of Home Assistant includes new area_id() and area_name() template functions. The following code is untested, but I believe this would turn off all lights in the same area as light.family_room.
# Turn off all lights in the family room area.
service: light.turn_off
target:
area_id: '{{ area_id("light.family_room") }}'