I’m slowly moving over to HA and I added the emulated hue. I already had Alexa connected to Smartthings. I tried to have her discover devices in HA, but she didn’t find any. Do I need to disconnect the Smartthings integration with Alexa for this to work? My plan was to have Alexa control devices on both hubs until I can migrate everything over to HA, but I am not sure that’s even possible?
By moving devices, do you mean that you are removing them from SmartThings and adding them to Home Assistant? Or do you mean you are using the integration linking SmartThings to Home Assistant and trying to control them via Alexa using emulated Hue?
Also, do you have the correct generation of Echo devices for using the emulation? This only works on the older devices like Gen 1 and 2.
Removing devices from Smartthings and adding to HA. I believe they are gen 3 echo devices and also and Echo Show 8. Does Smartthings need to be removed before this integration can be done? Also, I believe there are a few other methods out there, one being AWS and the other is a Node-Red integration. Do any of these still work?
Echo Gen 3 won’t work I’m afraid. I believe it is only the Gen 1 & 2 Dots and Gen 1 Echo.
Honestly, your best bet is to pay for a Nabu Casa subscription, which makes it super easy to add devices to Alexa. Then you can use the integration from both platforms to Alexa easily until you’re fully moved over.
Interesting - I didn’t see anything that said it was restricted to certain devices. I am going to look at the AWS and Node-Red options. If anyone out there has used either of these, feel free to share your experience.
Yeah, I no longer see that in the specifications, but it was there in the past. Maybe that’s no longer applicable? The issue was the device had to work with the original hub by Hue.
The process has become tricky over the years. I last had it working about 9 months ago and decided it was no longer worth the hassle. Every time you add a new device it can cause issues requiring you to flush the system and start over. I have successfully set it up probably a half dozen times over the last few years but I keep coming back to using Nabu Casa. My time is worth the subscription cost.
Are you able to see if the Nabu Casa integration can control devices such as receivers (Onkyo/Pioneer) and newer generation Samsung TV’s, by chance? These can be exposed to HA, so I am wondering if Alexa can “see” and control them via the Nabu Casa integration?
Unfortunately I don’t own any of those to try. I use an RF system to control my audio/video equipment and never by voice.
Another option a lot of people are now using to publish to Amz is Matter. I do not know how well it works or how hard/finicky it is but it is forward looking instead of backward looking like emulated hue. May fit the bill for what I THINK you’re trying to do.
Theres an integration called matter bridge that publishes the HA entities as matter. Study first I do not know the best order of ops. There.
Besides that yeah, Nabu is the easiest by far for the Alexa ha skill but it is cloud.
…And yes you can control ha devices in Amz with the skill. But like I said cloud connected so all those caveats apply.
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I’ll take a look at this, thanks. If I am understanding this correctly, Alexa would be able to see the devices, thinking they are matter?
Yup. That’s exactly what it does.
That also means you’re under the same limits of Matter. You’ll only be able to use it for types natively supported by Matter.
(read: prob not the TV) but you Can have multiple integrations and only publish the stuff you want through the Alexa integration (something SmartThings couldn’t do - selective advertising)
Got it - it might be easier to set up than, let’s say, some of the Node-Red integrations. I find them pretty cool, but it does involve significant investment in time to get it set up and I still haven’t found a perfect way to control receivers, TV’s, etc… I think what I might do is just leave my Smartthings hub in place to control the TV’s…as it usually works pretty decent…everything else will be HA. Sorta like how I used to use Harmony Hub to control the TV, etc.
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Yes if you expose them to alexa via nabu casa.
You can also avoid using nabu casa and test this yourself using Alexa Smart Home SKill, however you will need to manually expose your system to the internet, set up a development account for AWS services, and build your own skill. It’s all covered in the Alexa Smart Home Skill documentation and it’s free. The trade off is that it’s alot to set up, where nabu casa just works with virtually no setup.
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