Not really a config issue perse, however i have 2 instances of HA running connected to one Amazon Account.
My House, which has identies such as lounge, living room, bathroom etc (all the normal rooms for lights etc)
My CamperVan is the same with the same identies. so when switching lounge light on in the camper i etither get questioned which device, or both the house light and camper light will come on.
What im after is does anybody have similar issues, and what naming conventions do you use to differentiate between HA instances?
I need to have single word named devices due to alexa/echo not being to good at recognizing my broad Lancashire accent
Any input greatly recieved. We are off on travels round europe in August and dont want the house lights coming on all the time im asking the van lights to come on
Yes it works. My van runs on 4G LTE router via VPN to my home broadband. That way I can access it anywhere via my static IP at home. SIM card Ip is double Natted from Vodafone.
So effectively it’s one network with multiple HA and multiple echos, hence the confusion I’m encountering.
The component is the standard one provided with hassbian.
I still don’t think you understand me. What are you using on the HOME ASSISTANT side. The hue component in home assistant will not communicate with alexa. That component allows home assistant to communicate with the hue bridge.
Ok, that’s emulated hue. Emulated hue is not the same as hue. This is why I’ve been asking.
So in order to have 2 ‘hue’ bridges, you need to follow what alexa requires in order to have 2 bridges. From what I remember, the first bridge should connect automatically through discovery, the second bridge has to be used through a separate alexa hue app.
I’m going off what it used to be like 5 months ago. Many people have complained about the integration. Everything on the discovered bridge works as normal. Everything on the second bridge requires extra voice commands. Like “alexa ask living room to turn on x lights”.
I see what you’re saying but it does discover both emulated hues. And they do both work.
So when I go into the Alexa app smart devices page everything is listed albeit some device names are duplicated. Purely down to the fact my entity name scheme have the same names.
So I can rename them within the Alexa app, but I need a decent naming structure.
Example
I got in from work today and the Mrs said the lounge light isn’t working via Alexa, working fine on the ha dash wall tablet.
I tried it and she acknowledged turning on the light. But no light came on. I checked the front end of my camper HA instance and the lounge light was on.
So what I need to do is rename the device within Alexa smart device for my camper lounge light and call it something different.
Trouble is what do I call it? Which is why I was asking about naming schemes. I understand what you’re getting at. I think So I could have a dedicated area (such as I.e house and camper) then say turn on lounge in camper. If that’s right is there an easy way? Trouble is my accent doesn’t help when I request dual word entities as it is
Thats good to know. At least they changed it from the old behavor.
Well you should really rename things from the emulated hue side because these are named from home assistant. Because this is a ‘fake bridge’ nothing really communicates back with alexa when it comes to configuration changes.
Here is an example of my config. This is the easiest way to name things when exposing them to the emulated hue component. Then you have an easy to use list instead of dealing with alexa’s phone interface, which can be cumbersome.
emulated_hue:
host_ip: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
listen_port: xxxxxxxxxx
off_maps_to_on_domains:
- script
- scene
expose_by_default: true
exposed_domains:
- light
- switch
- input_boolean
- fan
entities:
fan.master_fixture:
name: Master Fan
switch.audio_1:
name: Audio One
switch.audio_2:
name: Audio Two
switch.pc:
name: Computer
switch.ps4:
name: Playstation
switch.switch:
name: Switch
switch.tv:
name: TV
switch.wii_u:
name: Wii U
switch.xbox_one:
name: Xbox One
switch.zone_1:
name: Zone One
switch.zone_2:
name: Zone Two
light.kitchen_cans:
name: Can Lights
light.dining_room_chandelier:
name: Chandelier
light.hallway:
name: Hallway
light.kitchen_island:
name: Island Lights
light.living_room:
name: Living Room Lamps
light.master_bathroom_cans:
name: Master Can
light.master_closet:
name: Master Closet
light.master_fixture:
name: Master Light
light.master_bathroom_sink:
name: Master Sink
switch.basement_cans:
name: Basement Cans
switch.basement_stairs:
name: Basement Stairs
switch.kitchen_cabinet:
name: Cabinet Lights
switch.downstairs:
name: Downstairs
switch.garage_entry:
name: Entry Lights
switch.floating_outlet_switch:
name: Echo Outlet
switch.foyer:
name: Foyer Lights
switch.garage_cans:
name: Garage Fixtures
switch.sconces_garage:
name: Garage Sconces
switch.kitchen_holiday:
name: Holiday Lights
switch.dining_room_hutch:
name: Hutch Lights
switch.inside:
name: Inside
switch.laundry:
name: Laundry
switch.sconces_main_entrance:
name: Main Sconces
switch.master_bathroom_fan:
name: Master Bath Fan
switch.office_outlet:
name: Office Desk Light
switch.office_switch:
name: Office Light Switch
switch.outside:
name: Outside
switch.outside_porch:
name: Outside Outlet
switch.kitchen_pantry:
name: Pantry Lights
switch.upstairs:
name: Upstairs
It doesn’t like simply using “camper lounge light” or “house lounge light”?
I could see that you might have issues with using just “lounge light” with one of them but adding “house” & “camper” in front of each I figured would work.
It works for me, but I don’t have 2 bridges. Also, knowing the way emulated hue bridge works, i’d expect all the unique naming needs to be done on the bridge side. Not alexa side.
I know this because if you make a change to the entity_id, it causes alexa to screw up big time. If he is using 2 entity id’s that are the same in 2 different bridges, it’s going to cause problems.
EDIT: And I want to clarify something as well, you can’t have the same friendly name linking to 2 different entity_id’s. That will also cause problems.
So he’ll need to have unique entity_id’s and unique friendly names across both instances of home_assistant.
I agree with most of that but I’m not entirely sure that’s all correct…
I was running 2 instances of HA for while during my transition to the NUC and both were almost completely identical except for the MQTT setup. The only problem was that Alexa found 2 of the same names on discovery and when I told it to turn those things on it said that 2 things were named the same and i needed to rename one. but that isn’t what the OP said is happening.
They should definitely rename the hue name (or alexa name or whatever it’s called) to be unique but otherwise it should probably work.
Yeah, all my information is from trial and error with alexa. It really annoys the shit out of me when I change a entity_id but not the hue name, because alexa will now have 2 devices with the same name. That’s pretty much what i’m going off of. The old entity_id named one will not work and the new one will. It’s hit or miss which one alexa uses when you use voice commands.
EDIT: Then you have to go in alexa and spend 20 minutes removing all the old named ones from routines and groups and add the new one in… even though they have the same ‘friendly name’ in the alexa UI.
Yeah I started doing that, but I wanted ‘real sentences’ when activating things through alexa. For example, i have a mode that sets up the downstairs lighting for game nights. Instead of saying “turn on game night”. I’ll say Alexa, start game night". That’s just one example, others are “get the shower ready”. “i’m done showering”. “Good morning”, “good bye”. And for each one the system just activates a script that home assistant runs.
