When I run the Alexa discover it finds all of my automations and groups. I go from 35 discovered devices to 97, PITA to delete them one at a time over and over.
I have tried disconnecting from cloud and reconnecting before discovery and I have tried the above hatchet approach to allowing none of my domains to get to the cloud.
Right now, just testing to see if it all works since I may have other use cases at some point. I may go ahead and attache it to my emulated hue since I do have it up and running.
My original intent was to reduce my dependence upon any cloud when I set up the HA instance. This is more of a trial run than anything.
It does seem the filter option should help manage this. Have you tried to set the alexa_hidden attribute for a few items to see if that does the trick?
I read on another post that the filter exclude is broken currently (this is alpha or beta stuff I suppose). btw, for my Homebridge hidden needs I use customize_glob to hit most of my sensors with just a couple lines of code, if that helps any.
unless i’m mistaken a group is an entity and so is the contents of that group - i’ve not checked, but not sure if excluding a group will exclude all of its component parts.
So light 1, light 2 and light 3 = group 1
i can turn on and off group 1 (which turns 1, 2 & 3 on and off)
if i exclude group 1, i dont think the individual lights 1, 2 & 3 are excluded (as you can still see them)
just start with all domains excluded, and add a single light. then go from there.
Dont forget to exclude scripts, scenes, sensors etc (lot of domains to exclude).
Customizing the name is less important as you can do that in the alexa app, but customizing the class of what alexa thinks it is - is super important so you can turn on or off, or add to routines etc
I had issues using routines and some scenes. I liked to customize my syntax. Instead of
‘Alexa, turn on dinnertime’
I preferred
‘Alexa, its dinnertime’