Integrating emulated_hue and alexa

Configuration
1

Hi, I’m new in Home Assistant and I’m building up all my integrations.
Part of the job is (would) be activating scripts via Alexa voice commands. And I’m trying to do using emulated_hue.

Home Assistant Version: 2025.11.3
Alexa devices I have at home (because it seems this is relevant): Echo Pop, Echo Spot with clock, quite recent.

So following documentation found around, I’ve created my configuration to expose emulated_hue as follow

emulated_hue:
  host_ip: 192.168.1.XX 
  listen_port: 80
  expose_by_default: false
  exposed_domains:
    - light
    - script
    - input_boolean
  entities:
    script.script_one:
      name: "Script one"
      hidden: false
    light.studio_2:
      name: "Studio 2 Hue"
      hidden: false

After having added this, following what suggested, I successfully accessed the JSON offered by emulated_hue.
So apparently the emulated_hue side is ok.

Then I tried to add the exposed devices (a script and a testing light) to Alexa, following suggested instruction, indicating a version1 hub.
Alexa never confirmed the addition of any device. After some attempts I gave up, reading that recent echos do no longer have support for that v1 protocol, altough they still offer the option in the app. Strange but possible.
So I gave up, until some hours later I casually made a discover:

Those virtual lights were not available in alexa’s device list, but available in the list of the device I may target during a routine action. So in an hybryd state.

Happy for the discovery I went sleep, and as my usual I commanded Alexa to turn off all the lights. Surprisingly I got my script triggered. That’s strange because I was commanding “off”, but understandable as the script is seen now as a “light” by Alexa.

My goal would be achieved if I can revert the type of the script virtual light to something else to avoid it to be triggered in “all lights”, but I can’t do this, because in the device list I don’t see it.

So… I had to comment out the script exposure to avoid that someone triggers it, it opens a gate, so it has sever security concerns. HA restarted, emulated hue json updated.

The final result now is … my Alexa device list got completely broken and doesn’t load. Cannot make it load back after restart of anything involved.

  • Do someone experienced something of this?
  • Is it normal, like GPT told me, that those virtual devices appear only in the targettable lights list, but not in the device list itself?
  • is there a way, thus, to change the “alexa perception” of the virtual light backed by a script as something that is not a light?
  • and mainly, how can I restore my device list in Alexa, if like I suspect, the issue is caused by emulated_hue (now disabled)?

My personal opinion and feeling that all resides in the alexa side.

Thanks in advance for any help!

2

Absolutely.

This is not a helpful thing to say, but maybe it’s time to consider moving all your device handling to Home Assistant? You could continue to use Alexa as a voice assistant, to turn specific exposed devices on and off, but replace the routines with Home Assistant automations, scripts, templates and helpers. You might even think about replacing Hue with a Zigbee network.

It’s a big job, but it opens up future possibilities. Alexa is a bit of a cul de sac.

1 Like
3

Actually, is what I’m doing. All the alexa routines are going to be replaced by HA scripts, they can do a lot more. My attempt with emulated hue was to run the “no subscription” way to have a voice assistant.
That is not feaseable, unfortunately (I’m going to write a self reply to this for the sake of whoever will, in the future, waste a week following wrong suggestions)

1 Like
4

So, I finally understood I wasted a lot of time.

The idea was to have a voice triggered (alexa device) home assistant script. The official and suggested (now also by me) way to do it is to buy the Nabu Casa subscription. Other way I attempted following bad suggestions are not reliable, even if funny.

So, specifically:

Issue with alexa and disappearing devices

You know the kid that places the finger in the socket the exact moment the power goes down around whole city? That’s me. The issue in Alexa device list was a temporary issue on their server, that’s what told me from their support. So, no, I didn’t trigger it.

Changing the type of a device in Alexa.

If you have a device in Alexa you can change its type by clicking on the settings tab. But if the device is already a light, you cannot change type anymore. Silly, but documented. Probably because they should go around to find in which groups the device is no longer appropriate. So if you have a Shelly switch and you changed it to “light” type, to restore it as a switch you have to delete it and re-add it.

Changing the device type of a “virtual light”

For what I wrote above, as the Home Assistant entities exposed through emulated_hue are seen in Alexa as lights, they may only remain lights. So they will be - without any possible exception - included in “all lights” statement. And this makes my idea fail. Because if your script is a general purpose script that - like in my case - opens a gate, well… you don’t want it to be triggered by random “switch off the lights” of your family.

So, if you fell on this post because ChatGPT or Gemini just suggested you that you can use emulated_hue to trigger scripts in home assistant asking alexa to switch on lights, well… it’s true, even too much. Don’t try that road!

5

There is another way: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/matter-hub-simple-setup-to-link-google-home-alexa-and-siri-to-home-assistant/792902.