Home Assistant seems to be non-integratable with alexa and smartthings

Third party integrations
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I am frustrated that I started my home automation for my vacation home using Home Assistant first. I have my zwave switches hooked up to HA, but I cannot add Alexa integration to control them, nor can I get SmartThings on my Samsung smart TV to integrate either. These switches are now solely controlled by the home assistant application. And I can’t control it outside the house either. Another barrier is my vacation home is in Canada, which also makes the Nabu Casa integration non-available. I am very frustrated because if I had bought a full SmartThings hub, I could manage everything from anywhere. Home Assistant is making this house be on an island and not controllable or visible outside of its walls, and without voice control.

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I’m not aware of there being any limitation of Nabu Casa and Canada. Can you explain? I also believe this is the easiest way to connect to Alexa, but I’ve never used that before.

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I’m sorry you think that. Honestly you should point your ire at Samsung and Amazon.

Think about it

HA can (sure does bring I information to control items in both Alexa and SmartThings environments - true I’ve done both) but Amazon has absolutely no interest in letting you control thier stuff outside thier environment. Samsung does it begrudgingly but you need to understand apis and authentication…

Theres things like matter bridges and integrations and stuff. All in the HA side and how much on the Amazon /St sides?

Im also a SmartThings refugee and trust me it’s not NEARLY as appealing as you think thier infrastructure is almost as closed as Amazon now.

Most of us have plenty of luck making HA the center of these ecosystems.

So let’s begin at the beginning

What have you tried to setup and how.

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It’s going to be alright. There are solutions for your woes.

First, regarding accessing HA from outside the home. The Nabu Casa subscription only supports one installation/account. So… you’d need a 2nd subscription to host your vacation home’s HA. If that is not a viable solution, you’ll need to get your feet wet and do a little work. You can use DuckDNS add-on and use DDNS account to host HA from the vacation home. You also have the option to use most any DDNS provider and use Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) add-on to host HA. You’ve options there. DuckDNS is the simpler solution, but less secure than using NPM.

Regarding controlling things using Alexa, obviously setting up a 2nd subscription to use the Alexa Nabu skill is the simplest solution, but again, if that’s not viable/affordable, then there are some free alternatives that require some legwork. You can use the Matter Hub add-on to share those devices to Alexa. That’s the simple free solution. There is also the Custom Alexa Smart Home Skill option. This is not for the feint of heart and requires way more legwork and patience to setup, as you’ll need to create accounts on AWS and Amazon Developer Console to create the skill.

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