Hello there!
I am going crazy because I am not sure how I should proceed and blogs I found usually do not explain what I am looking for. First of all I have Home Assistant (Supervised) with subscription so I could use Alexa. Now I have few different products with their own hubs like Philips Hue and Tado. I’ve integrated both in Home Assistant and Alexa with skills. What’s making me go haywire is that devices in Alexa (alexa.amazon.com and Alexa app on iOS) are doubled and I have no idea what is the best practice is such scenario.
I know that I could:
Install Alexa skills and do not expose devices in HA to Alexa.
Do not install Alexa skills and expose devices in HA to Alexa.
I do both. Yes, I have to deal with devices being named twice but I put up with it so I can control each of those devices by either HA automations or me conversing with my echos.
What I do is expose them to google through their native apps (eg Tado or Tradfri) and block the exposure from HA to Google Home. That way I only have them once, yet I have the redundancy if for instance HA decides to call it quits for the day.
It’s saved me a few times when I was away and my wife had an issue with HA. She just goes to the native app and it’s sorted.
@Cazimbo So to sum up:
You add devices to HA (obviously) and Google Home (in terms of Alexa skills) and you prevent HA exposing devices to your Google Home, correct? And if stuff goes bonkers then you just use app for specific appliance (Hue, Tado, Tradfri or whatever)?
I like the redundancy. There is a whole argument to be had about being disconnected from cloud services and privacy, speed or not being reliant on a service provider, but it has it’s benefits.
I like Tado as the system allows me to have temperatures and schedules per room, but I don’t like that the schedule is only saved in their cloud. If the wifi or their cloud goes down, you have to turn each valve manually. That has happened 2x in 2 years, so I tolerate it. My HA has played tricks on me more than 1/year